Online Plant Bioinformatics course

Prof. Nicolas James Provart, University of Toronto

Costs: access to limited modules is free, access to all modules after buying certificate
Enrolment: open now
More information & enrolment: www.coursera.org/learn/plant-bioinformatics

The past 15 years have been exciting ones in plant biology. Hundreds of plant genomes have been sequenced, RNA-seq has enabled transcriptome-wide expression profiling, and a proliferation of “-seq”-based methods has permitted protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions to be determined cheaply and in a high-throughput manner. These data sets in turn allow us to generate hypotheses at the click of a mouse. For instance, knowing where and when a gene is expressed can help us narrow down the phenotypic search space when we don’t see a phenotype in a gene mutant under “normal” growth conditions. Coexpression analyses and association networks can provide high-quality candidate genes involved in a biological process of interest. Using Gene Ontology enrichment analysis and pathway visualization tools can help us make sense of our own ‘omics experiments and answer the question “what processes/pathways are being perturbed in our mutant of interest?”

Structure
Each of the 6 week hands-on modules consists of a ~2 minute intro, a ~20 minute theory mini-lecture, a 1.5 hour hands-on lab, an optional ~20 minute lab discussion if experiencing difficulties with lab, and a ~2 minute summary.