Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Moving Education Forward

2007; Public Library of Science; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030019

1553-7358

F. Lewitter,

Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies

he need to train biologists in computational methods is greater than ever before.Recently, I asked an MIT Biology Professor if his newer graduate students were more knowledgeable in bioinformatics and computational biology than in past years.He hesitated and said he needed to think more about it; there wasn't a clear answer.What is clear, however, is that most graduate students are computer savvy and are comfortable using computers for writing and searching the Web.They may also have used computational tools on the Web but with little understanding of the guts of the algorithm.It is this group of students, as well as those further along in their careers, whom we hope to reach with the publication of learned articles in the Education section of PLoS Computational Biology.Regardless of readers' levels of experience, we strive to provide a starting point for inquisitive minds.The Education column of PLoS Computational Biology was introduced one year ago [1] with the goal to provide both practical and background information on important computational methods used to investigate interesting biological problems.During this first year, we have made strides toward this goal by publishing three excellent Education articles on diverse topics.Our first tutorial was presented in April 2006 and was well-received, staying on the list of PLoS Computational Biology Top 10 articles downloaded well after its publication date.Practical Strategies for Discovering Regulatory DNA Sequence Motifs by MacIsaac and Fraenkel [2] explores microarray experiments, a common way of investigating gene expression.Identifying sequence motifs in sets of differentially regulated genes can provide insights into the mechanisms of regulation, but care must be taken to avoid the many spurious motifs that occur in genomic sequences.This first tutorial provides strategies to improve the chances of finding functional regulatory sites.The continued interest in this first of many tutorials to come demonstrates the need for high-quality tutorials for colleagues at all career levels.