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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Finding Hidden Messages in DNA (Bioinformatics I) by University of California San Diego

4.3
stars
994 ratings

About the Course

Named a top 50 MOOC of all time by Class Central! This course begins a series of classes illustrating the power of computing in modern biology. Please join us on the frontier of bioinformatics to look for hidden messages in DNA without ever needing to put on a lab coat. In the first half of the course, we investigate DNA replication, and ask the question, where in the genome does DNA replication begin? We will see that we can answer this question for many bacteria using only some straightforward algorithms to look for hidden messages in the genome. In the second half of the course, we examine a different biological question, when we ask which DNA patterns play the role of molecular clocks. The cells in your body manage to maintain a circadian rhythm, but how is this achieved on the level of DNA? Once again, we will see that by knowing which hidden messages to look for, we can start to understand the amazingly complex language of DNA. Perhaps surprisingly, we will apply randomized algorithms, which roll dice and flip coins in order to solve problems. Finally, you will get your hands dirty and apply existing software tools to find recurring biological motifs within genes that are responsible for helping Mycobacterium tuberculosis go "dormant" within a host for many years before causing an active infection....

Top reviews

JL

Jul 29, 2018

This course is very very good. Challenging at times. It does not hold your hand at all times and sometimes requires research to solve some of the problems, but I like the community and the approach.

DD

Sep 10, 2019

The material of the course is simply exquisitely presented. The concepts are clear, easy to grasp. You won't be a bioinformatician after doing this course, but you'll make the first step.

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151 - 175 of 249 Reviews for Finding Hidden Messages in DNA (Bioinformatics I)

By Weidong X

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Nov 25, 2016

very good.

By Wendy M F A

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Apr 30, 2023

Amazing!!

By Gustavo A C

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Aug 28, 2021

Excelente

By Greta G

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Jan 11, 2019

Great!

By O J

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Jan 4, 2017

This is certainly not a course for beginners! The content of the course were rather complex and prior computer science knowledge is extremely helpful to finish this course. It was a struggle for me to finish this course without any background in computer science. However, it was definitely challenging and gave me an insight on how two different disciplines can be connected in a single field of study. The only improvement I could think of is if there were videos regarding the basic computer science knowledge that could have helped biologists such as myself. Perhaps giving an example on how things are done could be useful. There were only a handful of examples and the examples only gave the answers but did not explain how to get that answer well enough.

By Jennifer M M

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Apr 30, 2018

Great course. Good introduction to applying computer science to real biology problems. Only cons to this course is that it tries to split the line between biologists wanting to learn more bioinformatics and data scientists wanting to learn bioinformatics which boils down to the coding being tough and at times not well explained and there not being enough explanation for the biology part. I wouldn't take this if you don't have any coding skills because without working through the coding challenges the course isn't useful and for those with what would be more novice coding skills (like me) be prepared to spend a lot of time on this course. Well worth the challenge.

By Micheal A

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Jun 25, 2018

I found this course incredibly enlightening and because I feel so highly of it I'm going to buy the accompanying book. My one issue is with peer evaluation of the final assignment, I don't believe in peer evaluation in situations where the peers may not be trained. What if one of the graders don't understand why they have a question wrong, despite having seen the answers. I don't think such a person should be allowed to perform evaluations. That being said,all the algorithms and the explanations behind them, super interesting and because I have taken this course and learned what I have, I am now considering graduate school in this field.

By Ludmila D

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Jul 18, 2020

The authors are funny guys and the explanation of material is solid. However, I found programming tasks not specified properly. I found difficulties in understanding ~25% of tasks and I had to read comments to get the task properly. In addition, there are lots of dependencies on syntaxis output which has nothing to do with answers and material understanding. Poor biologists who attempt to complete the programming section. It has to be improved (and there are tons of ideas on how to improve it in Stepik comments ). Just improve the programming part and the course will become invaluable!

By Beatrice R

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Sep 27, 2017

I enjoyed and learned a lot from this course. I have no background in biology or computer science. My recommendation would be that there are more examples and explanations and problem-solving activities that do not require programming. This is my first Coursera course and I realize I could have benefitted more from hearing and speaking about what I was learning. It would have helped me answer the short-answer questions of the project. I hope to complete the specialization and have already started the second course.

By Sanjay V

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Nov 23, 2020

I took a JHU course on Galaxy, which used high level tools and wanted to learn more about the algorithsms. This course helped me with that. Knowing Python definitely helped and made this course relatively easy. Most people with some coding experience will find this informative but easy. I dont know if this coursewould be useful to a person who does not have knowledge or access to some basic programming tools (The course makes the claim that no programming experience required)

By Duncan P

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May 3, 2020

This is a really good introduction to finding motifs - thank you!

The main thing I feel could do with some attention is the automated marking of some of the assignments, particularly the final one on Week 4, where only 7% of submissions are marked as correct because the probabilistic algorithm only gets the expected answer some of the time. There is also often inconsistency on expected whitespace (really, who care about insignificant whitespace).

By Francois O

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Oct 30, 2017

Very interesting. I learned two important concepts about DNA during this class. C-G skew due to a more likely odd of mutation; and how to find motifs in seemingly random DNA strings. However some pseudocodes need some improvements. They sometime have part that only make sense after you read comments by other students, or variable names that could be better chosen (I wrote a comment at that place).

By Luke M Y

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Nov 17, 2020

Great course, but it absolutely requires experience with python so I was unable to complete it as I have only a biology background! Also, the quiz questions are terribly formatted and you will require multiple attempts to figure out how to put the correct answer in the format they require or even understand what they are asking, they should include practice quizzes with guided explanations.

By Tevin F

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May 26, 2023

This course is good for foundations, but a lot of the information is outdated. I learned a ton from it, definitely still worth taking. You absolutely need to learn to code for this course. If I had not had programming experience, I would simply not have been able to take the course and learn anything practical from it. Very interesting and good practical data and examples for practice.

By Rohit C R

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Jan 15, 2017

It may be more helpful to students who are not taking the honors code if they had access to ready made programming codes to complete the stepik exercises as it is extremely taxing and not feasible to solve all problems by hand.

Brilliantly structured and very effective learning method!

I also felt that Gibbs sampling could have been explained further or more in detail.

Thank you!

By Fikrat T

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Nov 11, 2019

Excellent course. Excellent tutors. I am a fan of stepik.org and this course. However, the only thing that I consider redundant in this course is peer to peer assignment; and I guess solution here is to reduce number of peers who must review the assignment. I think 3 peers are enough to grade the assignment.

But everything rest is top!

By Shane P

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Aug 15, 2020

Great course! Really liked the instructors and the online tool to follow along with concepts and coding challenges. There were a few points with vague instructions that took some extra time to figure out. Would definitely recommend this course but it will be more difficult for people with little to no programming experience.

By Jad H

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Mar 8, 2021

Even if quite hard, contrary to what is said at the beginning, this course challenged my biology knowledge whilst introducing me to the fascinating world of algorithms and coding. I'd recommend starting an introductory course on biology meets programming before starting this adventure.

By Lee Z Y

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Sep 27, 2020

Content-wise it was great. I got quite disheartened by the peer graded assignment: the majority of the submissions I graded just copied the rubric. There needs to be a negative grade for cheaters - but I think it better that we don't have peer-graded assignments in the first place.

By Yousef A

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Jan 12, 2019

I really liked the course, I had fun finishing assignments and learning the theory behind each concept. However, I take my time very seriously and this course has underrated the time you should devote as I end up having too much pressure due to other work I should be doing.

By Vishnu K

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Oct 6, 2020

This course is awesome but I had done the same course named Biology meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners which was uploaded ago by these guys but it was not a specialization for that course. Or I may not say it very surely.

By Tuan N

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Feb 1, 2021

As a graduate student with background in molecular biology, I find the computational challenging enough, and there is some new insights in biology as well. However, some of the lectures of week 3 and week 4 are very confusing.

By CHAN V S F

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May 9, 2021

Good introductory course for Bioinformatics. I like the hands-on activities in Week 5. However, sometimes I do not understand the pseudo code and therefore need to read the comments shared by other learners.

By Michael O

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Jun 29, 2016

Very nice course and information, but backend could be more polished. Many tasks (expecially about randomized algorithms) could fail even if you do 100% right. And very little debug information provided.

By Pedro H S

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Jul 20, 2022

The course has a good material, however I consider is not explained correctly. Sometimes it is very hard to understand each topics and you need some knowleadge related with programming.