Teaching the ‘BIO’ in Microbial BIOinformatics

Academic secondee: Steve Forsythe

Bioinformatics is the analysis of DNA sequences, which has increased enormously in recent years. It has been identified that although students on Masters programmes tend to have strong computational skills, they frequently lack an understanding of the biological significance of their findings. This project aimed to address the issue through the generation of a series of workshops, using interesting biological case studies to enhance the learning process.

A future aim is to generate exercises based on the topical theme of ‘biofuels’, for use on the Applied and Environmental Microbiology (level 2) and the Enzyme Technology and Biocatalysis (level 4) modules.

For further information, download the project poster.

Presentation given at NTU's Science Learning and Teaching Conference: Putting the Bio- into Microbial Bioinformatics.