Python Programming for Biological Problems

About Python Programming for Biological Problems

Biologists, biology students, and professionals in related fields generally have little or no contact with computer programming. However, the growing of data in genomic, protein and organism databases can be used to model the solution for some problems, such as the discovery of medicines and insecticides. It leads biologists to benefit from computer programming knowledge, so that they can develop useful applications in molecular biology, ecology, research on diseases, among others.

This course was developed with the purpose of introducing biologists, students of biology, biomedicine, ecology, pharmacy and professionals in related areas to programming using Python, which is nowadays one of the most used programming languages. It has a clear syntax and is easy to learn especially if you are a professional who are not familiar with technology. Many tools used in the field of biology were written in Python, which makes it a great option for establishing your first contact with computer programming. You will learn the following topics:

Python installation and main tools (IDEs)

Variables, constants and strings

Math operations

Logical, relational and conditional operators

Loops (for and while)

Functions

Lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets and arrays

Manipulation of text files

Error and exception handling

Regular expressions

Object oriented

After learning the basic concepts of Python, you will be able to apply the concepts in exercises, challenges and practical projects related to ​​Biology. Below are some of the case studies that we will implement step by step:

Prediction of the mass of a peptide sequence according to its amino acid composition

Schedule a biology test that calculates the grade and whether the user got each question right or wrong

Creating classes related to objects in the biological world

.fasta gene sequence analysis

Analysis of gene frequencies according to the Hardy-Weinberg Theorem

Creating functions for population ecology calculations

Discover patterns in RNA sequences

Estimation of gene distances

Basic species identification

Troubleshooting gene frequencies

Creating scripts for parsing .pdb-type protein sequence files

Transcription of DNA sequences into RNA

There are more than 80 classes, concepts, code demonstration, and exercises with solutions! More than 30 proposed challenges and 4 small projects applying the concepts learned in each section in a biological context, with step-by-step resolution.