Beginning Python for Bioinformatics:gcufbioinfo

Bioinformatics, the use of computers in biological research, is the newest wrinkle on one of the oldest pursuits--trying to uncover the secret of life. While we may not know all of life's secrets, at the very least computers are helping us understand many of the biological processes that take place inside of living things. In fact, the use of computers in biological research has risen to such a degree that computer programming has now become an important and almost essential skill for today's biologists.

The purpose of this article is to introduce Python as a useful and viable development language for the computer programming needs of the bioinformatics community. In this introduction, we'll identify some of the advantages of using Python for bioinformatics. Then we'll create and demonstrate examples of working code to get you started. In subsequent articles we'll explore some significant bioinformatics projects that make use of Python.