MCD BIO 187AL
Research Immersion Laboratory in Genomic Biology
Description: Lecture, three hours; laboratory, six hours. Requisites: Life Sciences 4 or 107, 23L. Course 187AL is requisite to 187BL. Limited to Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology majors. Introduction to cutting-edge genomic technologies and bioinformatics methods and resources for genome annotation. Students propose original research projects related to gene annotation and drive their projects using bioinformatics tools. Students are provided fragments of genome from relatively poorly studied organism that has been sequenced at UCLA. May not be repeated for credit. Letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2017 - 187AL is a purely computer-based bioinformatics lab. You don't need any previous knowledge or particular skill set to succeed, aside from being generally competent with a computer. All work is completed during the lab section (3 hours/day, twice a week). Lectures (75 minutes/day, twice a week) are solely for providing background information on the programs you'll be using throughout the quarter and for student presentations (3 weeks-worth total). Your grade is three 5-minute "progress report style" presentations (15% each) which you pretty much get full points just for presenting on what you've worked on so far, and the final lab report (55%) which is approximately 15 pages long, give or take a few pages. You spend the first few weeks familiarizing your self with the tools/programs needed to annotate a genome (gene prediction, gene alignment, gene editing, RNA-seq, etc.) By Week 6, you should generally understand the entire annotation workflow you need to complete and the rest of the quarter is spent annotating a second/third gene and continuously refining your data. Draft sections of the lab report are due at the end of the week (intro, methods, abstract, etc.) throughout the quarter which is useful because it makes you stay on top of your report. The lab can be laborious and the software can be temperamental but this is not a difficult class whatsoever as long as you manage your time well.
Spring 2017 - 187AL is a purely computer-based bioinformatics lab. You don't need any previous knowledge or particular skill set to succeed, aside from being generally competent with a computer. All work is completed during the lab section (3 hours/day, twice a week). Lectures (75 minutes/day, twice a week) are solely for providing background information on the programs you'll be using throughout the quarter and for student presentations (3 weeks-worth total). Your grade is three 5-minute "progress report style" presentations (15% each) which you pretty much get full points just for presenting on what you've worked on so far, and the final lab report (55%) which is approximately 15 pages long, give or take a few pages. You spend the first few weeks familiarizing your self with the tools/programs needed to annotate a genome (gene prediction, gene alignment, gene editing, RNA-seq, etc.) By Week 6, you should generally understand the entire annotation workflow you need to complete and the rest of the quarter is spent annotating a second/third gene and continuously refining your data. Draft sections of the lab report are due at the end of the week (intro, methods, abstract, etc.) throughout the quarter which is useful because it makes you stay on top of your report. The lab can be laborious and the software can be temperamental but this is not a difficult class whatsoever as long as you manage your time well.
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2025 - This class is pretty chill and easy. The prof's lectures were very very boring and I pretty much stopped paying attention to them about halfway through the summer session, but they were mostly about how the different softwares works and not really important to understand how to use the softwares/get the wanted data/results. The lab sections were much more helpful on that end, with the TAs explaining what to do on each software in the first 30 minutes to an hour and you could leave the zoom to do your work for the rest of the lab time. Overall not really exciting at all, but if you want to still do some type of bio work over the summer or get practice writing a publishable scientific paper (or just want the MCDB lab credit covered since 104AL always fills up during priority enrollment...) this class is for you lol Grading: 15% - Attendance (both lecture and lab) 30% - 2 presentations (first is halfway through the quarter to show the prof/TA what you have so far and get feedback, second is the last day of class to show your finished results; both are just graded on completion) 55% - final report (a full-fledged scientific paper, actually graded on a rubric and stuff; they have you do each section throughout the quarter and give feedback so if you put in effort and listen to any feedback they give on each section, you should be fine when it's time to turn in the final paper)
Summer 2025 - This class is pretty chill and easy. The prof's lectures were very very boring and I pretty much stopped paying attention to them about halfway through the summer session, but they were mostly about how the different softwares works and not really important to understand how to use the softwares/get the wanted data/results. The lab sections were much more helpful on that end, with the TAs explaining what to do on each software in the first 30 minutes to an hour and you could leave the zoom to do your work for the rest of the lab time. Overall not really exciting at all, but if you want to still do some type of bio work over the summer or get practice writing a publishable scientific paper (or just want the MCDB lab credit covered since 104AL always fills up during priority enrollment...) this class is for you lol Grading: 15% - Attendance (both lecture and lab) 30% - 2 presentations (first is halfway through the quarter to show the prof/TA what you have so far and get feedback, second is the last day of class to show your finished results; both are just graded on completion) 55% - final report (a full-fledged scientific paper, actually graded on a rubric and stuff; they have you do each section throughout the quarter and give feedback so if you put in effort and listen to any feedback they give on each section, you should be fine when it's time to turn in the final paper)
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