Did you ever wonder what is the recipe for making us who we are, with 3.5 billion letters of A, C, G and T? What is the difference between mouse and Humans at molecular level? What happens when a virus attacks us? How are all forms of life related? I think many of you have several such questions at some stage of your life and still don't know the answer. You will be surprised to know that now with a degree in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) you can be really close to finding answers to many such questions with interdisciplinary approach of using mathematics, computer science, statistics, molecular biology, physics, electrical engineering, communication etc. Many aspects of molecular biology can be viewed as information processing and so molecular biology and computer science are very close to each other. It is for this reason one can say that the 21st century is for molecular biology.

This course covers basic techniques mainly algorithmic in nature to answer many questions in molecular biology. We will go through this journey with many case studies. Apart from focusing on some classical techniques from computational biology the main focus of the course will be on systems biology where we will explore it via variety of new techniques of ICT such as pi-calculus which was originated in mobile computing, abstract interpretation which was originated in software programs and also we require new gates and circuits.

This course is open to BTech (Semester 7) and MTech (Semester 3). Students from computer science track, communications track are encouraged to go for it.

• Course Instructor: Manish Gupta