Introduction to RNA-Seq Analysis

Prerequisites: BIOL BC1500,1501, 1502, 1503 and BIOL BC2100, or equivalent.

Transcriptome analysis, or the analysis of all expressed RNA sequences in a cell, has long been a major part of molecular biology and genetics. The modern technique of RNA-Seq has now been established as the approach for transcriptome studies and RNA-Seq analyses are ubiquitous in all areas of Biology. In this course we will cover the major technical and analytical aspects of RNA-Seq with an emphasis on the application by students to real datasets. We will cover both the original ‘Bulk RNA-Seq’ approach, where the total transcriptome of many cells are combined, and the more recent ‘single-cell RNA-Seq’ (scRNA-Seq) technology where transcriptomes of individual cells are analyzed separately. Students will learn to read and interpret journal articles that utilize RNA-Seq datasets, both bulk and single-cell, and to perform and present RNA-Seq data using publicly available datasets.