COMPUTERS MEET BIOLOGY - AN INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE APPROACH.

Interdisciplinary methods create connections between traditionally distinct disciplines such as sciences, social studies, arts, or languages. This paper presents the experience of team-teaching Bioinformatics by faculty from Computing Science (MK) and Biological Sciences (JU) in a Computing Science undergraduate course, "Introduction to Biomedical Informatics." The main purpose, to involve students, with little or no biological background, in actual research projects related to Biology and Medicine, was accomplished by hands-on exercises and assignments using real data from a medical clinic, and real DNA and RNA data from the sequencing of genes related to seed dispersal of a parasitic plant, Dwarf Mistletoe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]