Bioinformatics

3D View of DNA Molecule

The genome for a human, a mouse, or even a virus contains billions of base pairs of DNA sequence. How do scientists search through all of this data to make new discoveries? In this workshop, you’ll first learn how to compare organisms and how they are related using genetic information. Suppose you found a tuft of strange hair caught on a bush in the deep, dark UMass Lowell Forest. What creature left it behind??? Then, you will use 3-dimensional computer graphics to examine the structure of a complex biological molecule.

See how biologists, chemists, computer scientists, & mathematicians work together to unravel the mysteries of genes and the proteins they encode!

This is an animation of the DNA molecule unzipping and zipping. We will only be looking at one strand of DNA in Exercise 1.

The diffraction photograph of the B form of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin in May 1952 was by far the best photograph of its kind. Data derived from this photograph were instrumental in allowing James Watson and Francis Crick to construct their Nobel Prizewinning model for DNA. (Courtesy of the Norman Collection on the History of Molecular Biology in Novato, Calif.)

A photo of James Watson and Francis Crick with their first DNA model

Introduction to Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics