Searching the Genome Brian Cain

Computer Science and Biology Bioinformatics Develops and improves upon methods for storing, retrieving, organizing and analyzing biological data Huge help for processing large amounts of biological data Sequence Analysis The process of translating a DNA sequence to mRNA, then to amino acid (or protein sequence) Comparing new sequences to known sequences a way of understanding the biology of organisms from which the new sequence comes Algorithms help speed up the process

Computer Science and Biology Algorithms to replace work done by hand Algorithms is a step-by-step procedure Example: Following a recipe while cooking Programming helps speed up this process Converts algorithms on paper into computer programs What use to be done by hand can be automated by computers, which speeds up the process greatly

Translating DNA encoding into proteins A portion of DNA is transcribed into messenger RNA using the following mapping: Guanine pairs with Cytosine Cytosine pairs with Guanine Thymine pairs with Adenine Adenine pairs with Uracuil The Messenger RNA exits the nucleus and attaches to a ribosome. The ribosome “reads” the message code and assembles amino acids into the “requested” protein using this process: messenger RNA is paired with transfer RNA transfer RNA fetches an amino acid amino acids are assembled into the protein

Scratch Program This completed has been created in scratch

Background Info on Scratch If-Statements in programming if weather == "sunny" mood == "happy" if weather == "snowy" mood == "angry"

If-Statements in Scratch

Task to Complete Fill in the logical if-statements for mRNA More information on handout Once completed, test it against a DNA sequence

References http://www.google.com/edu/computational- thinking/lessons.html