School of Computer Science
Tel Aviv University
October 2001

Algorithms for Molecular Biology
0368.4020.01
http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~rshamir/algmb/01/algmb01.html
Course Requirements

Prerequisites

This is a graduate course which is open also to third year CS undergraduates.
No prior knowledge in biology is needed. The required background will be given during the course.

Course assignments and grading

Each student (or a pair of students, depending on course enrollment) will scribe (i.e., to prepare lecture notes) one lecture. The notes should be prepared in L^ATEX   and returned to the TA within a week after the lecture. They will be corrected by the TA or the lecturer, and then revised by the student and returned in final form within five days after the students were informed of the corrections. Notes should contain all the material presented in class, written in clear and accurate fashion, as well as the relevant references. Using figures and diagrams when necessary in order to clarify things is recommended. In most lectures, the scribes of lectures given in previous years can be used as a basis. Some of those require little update, but others may need substantial revisions!

There will be no final exam. The exercise sets will serve as a piecmeal take home exam. Solutions should be done independently by each student and without help from others. Use of books and articles for the solutions is allowed and will not affect the grading, but the sources should be noted in the solutions. Assignments are a mixture of theoretical, web-based and programming work. Most assignments contain built-in bonus, so by completing some 85-90% worth of all exercises you will be given full score.

Final Grade

75% from exercise sets + 25% from scribe. Scribe grade will be reduced by one point (out of the maximum of 25) for each late day past each of the two deadlines. This is done in order to ensure that scribes are completed and made available to the whole group promptly.