This course provides an introduction to Bioinformatics. The course content includes Historical perspectives, definitions. Introduction to sequences; sequence formats. Introduction to databases; sequence retrieval from public databases.Sequence alignment; local and global alignment. The FASTA and BLAST methods for database searches. Dot Matrix sequence comparisons. Dynamic programming algorithm; scoring matrices.Phylogenetic analysis; CLUSTAL W and T-Coffee MSA tools.Gene prediction in microbial and in eukaryotes.Protein classification and structure prediction.Genome analysis- gene anatomy.Comparative genomics.Applications of Bioinformatics. There will be 2 lecture hours and 1 three-hour laboratory each week. Prerequisite: CHEM 300.