Machine Learning Applications in Biology

I visited Professor Weigang Qiu at Hunter College last Wednesday. He is leading the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Lab and his research is focusing on comparative analysis of multiple genomes of the Lyme disease pathogen. We discussed the possibility to run a research project to support high-school students conducting advanced research in bioinformatics field. I also explained to him our machine learning-related activities, and our intention to expand our research activities into the biological science. He believed that we can run projects focusing on "machine-learning applications in biology". The possible applications may include gene prediction, cancer type classification based on gene expression, and gene function prediction (e.g., Borrelia, Lyme pathogen lipoproteins). Professor Qiu will explore more in this area and come up more detailed project description for us. 

In the mean time, our focus will be in three aspects:

1. Biology: Please review/preview chapters in your Biology/AP Biology textbook related to molecular genetics, gene expression, and genomes. If you need an AP Biology textbook, I can get one for you.
2. Machine Learning: If you have not trained to understand the perceptron at code level, please arrange time to do it. 
3. Bioinformatics: You also encouraged to take any MOOC bioinformatics course in the last post to build up the basic programming skill and knowledge of bioinformatics.

Please feel free to use our blog to share your study notes, programming examples, online resources, etc. You are also encouraged to invite like-minded friend to join our group.