Today, there is a burgeoning demand and scope of biological data. In this era of big biological data, you must polish your skills to be able to manage it. Honestly, by merely using conventional techniques, it is not possible to tackle a gigantic load of biological data.
This is where the role of Bioinformatics comes into play. It lies at an intersection of computer science and biology. Sans this fundamental skill, you have no stand in academia, research, and industry in the following five to ten years.
Bearing all this in mind, you must enroll in one of the best bioinformatics online courses. The internet has a plethora of such courses. Of the available courses, some truly stand out. In consultation with our experts, with this guide, we will discuss 11 such courses. So let us get started and take a look at these courses one by one.
Best Online Classes and Courses for Bioinformatics Training
- Bioinformatics Specialization – Offered by US San Diego – [Coursera]
- Bioinformatic Methods I – Offered by University of Toronto – [Coursera]
- Learn Bioinformatics in 6 Days – [Udemy]
- Learn Bioinformatics From Scratch (Theory & Practical) – [Udemy]
- Plant Bioinformatic Methods Specialization – Offered by University of Toronto – [Coursera]
- Bioinformatics: Introduction and Methods 生物信息学: 导论与方法 – Offered by Peking University – [Coursera]
- Genetics and Next Generation Sequencing for Bioinformatics – [Udemy]
- Practical Bioinformatics I – [Udemy]
- Clinical Bioinformatics: Unlocking Genomics in Healthcare – Offered by The University of Manchester – [FutureLearn]
- Bioinformatics Graduate Certificate – [Harvard Extension School]
- Computational Biology – [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]
11 Best Bioinformatics Certification Online
1. Bioinformatics Specialization – Offered by US San Diego – [Coursera]
| Offered By | US San Diego |
| Enrolled | 46,565 students |
| Rating | 4.4 |
| Duration | Approximately 9 months to complete
Suggested pace of 4 hours/week |
| Instructor | Pavel Pevzner, Nikolay Vyahhi, and Phillip Compeau |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 7-days free trial |
| Cons | More stress should be paid to clearing the fundamentals before moving to more advanced topics. |
This specialization is a cluster of seven bioinformatics online courses. Once you are through with the specialization, you will know the answer to several modern biology questions, which are today inseparable from the computational approaches used to solve them.
Further, the instructors will also provide you with a toolkit of existing software resources developed on these computational approaches, which thousands of biologists employ daily in this rapidly expanding scientific world.
Learning Outcomes
A few things detailed in this bioinformatics certification online course are:
- Sequencing and comparing genomes
- Identifying the genetic basis of the disease
- Constructing an evolutionary Tree of Life for all species on Earth
Prerequisites
These seven courses to learn bioinformatics online take you from the ground up. So, even though the courses center on computational topics, you don’t need to know about their programming for completing the course.
Also, the course is long. So, time and patience are indeed two vital prerequisites to take this bioinformatics online training.
2. Bioinformatic Methods I – Offered by University of Toronto – [Coursera]
| Offered By | University of Toronto |
| Enrolled | 93,153 students |
| Rating | 4.7 |
| Duration | Approx. 20 hours to complete |
| Instructor | Nicholas James Provart |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 14 days from the date of payment |
| Cons | The instructor should try to make the course a little more engaging. |
The extensive, large-scale projects, such as the human genome sequencing and gene expression surveys using microarrays, RNA-seq, and other technologies, have created a wealth of data for biologists.
But, the primary challenge faced by the scientists lies in analyzing and accessing the data towards extracting this vital information pertaining to the system studied. This is precisely what you will learn with this best bioinformatics certification online.
This is Course 1 of 4 in the Plant Bioinformatic Methods Specialization. This bioinformatics online course has two parts.
In part 1 of this course, you will study the database. It includes Blast, multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetics, selection analysis, and metagenomics.
There is also part 2 of the Bioinformatic Methods II course. It will cover motif searching, protein-protein interactions, structural bioinformatics, gene expression data analysis, and cis-element predictions.
Learning Outcomes
When you take this course to learn bioinformatics online, there is a bunch of things you will know. These include:
- Employing existing bioinformatic resources, precisely web-based databases, and programs
- Accessing the wide variety of data to answer the questions related to an average biologist
- Multiple sequence alignments
- Gene expression data analysis
- Phylogenetics
- Protein interaction networks, in two separate parts
Who should take this course?
These best bioinformatics online courses will prove incredibly helpful for any student who aspires to take biologic science in graduate school. Further, students studying molecular medicine will also benefit from the course.
Prerequisites
It is a beginner-level course. You don’t need any prerequires as such.
Review SA:
This course is very well organized, easy to understand, and explained everything steps by step which will help to grasp the concept easily. If you are a beginner like me, you should take this course.
3. Learn Bioinformatics in 6 Days – [Udemy]
| Rating | 4.2 based on 570+ ratings |
| Enrolled | 2,429 students |
| Duration | 4.5 hours on-demand video |
| Instructor | Isaac Alfred |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee |
| Cons | There is very little hands-on practice that you get with this course. |
Learning Outcomes
A few things to learn in this bioinformatics certification online course are:
- Fundamental understanding of Bioinformatics
- Importance of Bioinformatics in the scientific world
- History of Bioinformatics
- Integrating biological concepts with information technologies for studying the biological system
- Storing and manipulation of data
- Basic concepts of scoring matrices
- Combining both theoretical and practical knowledge to solve research problems in proteomics, genomics, and bioinformatics
- Understanding of nucleotide databases
- Applying the computational and theoretical methodologies to the information mining from the large datasets of biological origin
- Manipulating data on the computer
- Nucleotide and protein sequence BLAST programs
- Protein databases
- Understanding algorithms, which underlie the analysis tools that are used for essential research tasks
- Aligning 100 DNA sequences
- Global and Local sequence alignments
- Local sequence alignment using a Bioinformatics tool known as BLAST
- Identification of species and their classification
- Different kinds of phylogeny analysis and algorithms
- Constructing a tree of life
- Genome analysis
- Understanding of structural and comparative genomics in detail
Prerequisites
A few prerequisites associated with this bioinformatics online course are:
- Interest in learning Bioinformatics and maintaining the same across the length of the course
- Base level knowledge in molecular biology
- Understanding of basic genetics and other life science
For a few chapters, you will have to download and install some software for the analysis tutorial. So, for this, you must have:
- A desktop or a laptop
- 4 GB RAM
- Storage capacity for data storing
- Good qualitative (semantic) and quantitative (mathematics/statistics) reasoning.
Who should take this course?
This is the best bioinformatics online training that will benefit anyone who aspires to learn Bioinformatics.
Review Amol kunde:
I am really enjoying the course. It is a crystal clear course and very well explained.
4. Learn Bioinformatics From Scratch (Theory & Practical) – [Udemy]
| Rating | 4.5 |
| Enrolled | 1,049 students |
| Duration | 6.5 hours on-demand video |
| Instructor | Dr. Muhammad Dujana |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee |
| Cons | Broadly, the students have only appreciated the course, but, in our view, the instructor could try stretching some topics, which do not need a detailed analysis. |
In every way possible, this is the best bioinformatics certification online. It is going to prove to be a gamechanger for you. There are five modules included:
(1) Databases
(2) Alignment
(3) Genomic Bioinformatics
(4) Structural Bioinformatics
(5) Evolutionary Bioinformatics
An exceptional thing about this course is that it is a fine mix of practical and theoretical knowledge. Across the course, you will be taught basics around bioinformatics, and your learnings are assessed with practical exercises and quizzes.
You will find some 93 lectures in this bioinformatics online course, along with 19 practical tutorials. There are also 12 assignments and five quizzes to check your understanding. Be rest assured, once you complete the course, your perspective towards biological data will be changed forever.
Learning Outcomes
A few things you will learn in this bioinformatics online class are:
- Fundamental theory and practical demonstration of Bioinformatics tools
- Exploring databases and aligning sequences
- Theoretical and practical knowledge to predict genes and their regulation elements
- Thorough understanding of homology modeling for 3D structure prediction
- 3D structure prediction with threading algorithm
- Secondary structure prediction of transmembrane and globular proteins
- Theoretical understanding of Phylogenetic tree
- Construction of Phylogenetic tree
- Receptor-ligand docking and analysis of docking data
Prerequisites
Some knowledge in Biological macro-molecules fundamentals will help in this best bioinformatics online class.
Who should take this course?
This bioinformatics online training is ideal for biological sciences beginners. Further, data science novice learners who are interested in biological data will also benefit from the course.
Review Emmanuel Owoeye:
The course was interesting and well paced to allow beginners have a good grasp of bioinformatics. The progression was also good.
5. Plant Bioinformatic Methods Specialization – Offered by University of Toronto – [Coursera]
| Offered By | University of Toronto |
| Enrolled | 9,340 students have taken this bioinformatics online course |
| Rating | 4.8 |
| Duration | Approximately 8 months to complete
Suggested pace of 2 hours/week |
| Instructor | Nicholas James Provart |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 7-days free trial |
| Cons | The instructor should include their individual resources in the course instead of depending too much on third-party resources. |
There has been a drastic evolution in the field of plant biology in the past 15 years. Several hundreds of plant genomes have been sequenced, RNA-seq has enabled transcriptome-wide expression profiling, and proliferation of seq”-based methods have allowed protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions to be cheaply determined in an incredible throughput manner.
Consequently, following this evolution, these data sets have enabled us to generate hypotheses at the click of a mouse or merely a tap of the finger.
It is a 100% bioinformatics certification online course, which will bag you a certificate once you are through with it.
Learning Outcomes
It is one of the best bioinformatics online courses, wherein you will be introduced to the following:
- Bioinformatic resources and competencies include phylogenetics in Bioinformatic Methods I, Blast, NCBI’s Genbank, and multiple sequence alignments
- Structural bioinformatics
- Protein-protein interaction
- RNA-seq analysis in Bioinformatic Methods II
- 33 plant-specific online tools
- Genome browsers
- Plant Bioinformatics Capstone
- Transcriptomic data mining to promoter/network analyses and others
- Hypothesizing a biological role for a gene of unknown function
Prerequisites
This is a beginner-level course. Hence, you need no prior knowledge or experience to take the course. Some prerequisites for this bioinformatics online class are:
- Access to a computer or laptop for running the program
- Time & patience to take the course
6. Bioinformatics: Introduction and Methods 生物信息学: 导论与方法 – Offered by Peking University – [Coursera]
| Offered By | Peking University |
| Enrolled | 26,260 students |
| Rating | 4.4 |
| Duration | Approx. 25 hours to complete |
| Instructor | Ge Gao and Liping Wei |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 14 days from the date of payment |
| Cons | The course does seem a little outdated at times. |
This is one of the best bioinformatics online training program presented to you by Peking University. All the course materials of the course are available under the CC BY-NC-SA License.
This bioinformatics online course comes with flexible deadlines. In addition, you bag a shareable certificate with the course, which can amplify your chances of landing a job.
Learning Outcomes
Some things you will learn in this bioinformatics certification online course are:
- Concepts and the computational methods in the interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics
- Applications of computational methods in biology
- Knowledge and skills in bioinformatics needed for future research and study
Prerequisites
It is a long course. So, time is definitely a vital factor. But, beyond that, there are no prerequisites as the course starts with the fundamentals.
Review WK:
The course has given me a great way to learn Bioinformatics. I especially loved the mode of teaching and the case studies.
7. Genetics and Next Generation Sequencing for Bioinformatics – [Udemy]
| Rating | 4.3 based on 880+ ratings |
| Enrolled | 2,930 students |
| Duration | 3 hours on-demand video |
| Instructor | Shreeya Kumaresan |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee |
| Cons | The course should have been made more comprehensive. More topics could have been detailed. |
Do you want to learn about the latest advances in DNA sequencing technology and its application for disease research and personalized cancer therapy? Is your goal to employ Bioinformatics tools for data analysis?
Well, if the answer is yes, this is one of the best bioinformatics online courses for you.
In this course, you will be working on a step-by-step guided project wherein you assess raw data quality from an Illumina sequencer. You will also use FastQC and Trimmomatic to a better quality of the data utilized.
Learning Outcomes
With this course to learn bioinformatics online, some concepts that you will be familiarized with are:
- Fundamentals of DNA, RNA, and Genetics
- Using the cloud-based platform Galaxy to analyze large sequencing datasets
- Understanding of the latest advances in the Next Generation DNA sequencing technology
- Assessing the quality of raw data
- Using FastQC and Trimmomatic to improve data quality
- Applications in Personalized Cancer Therapy and Disease Research
- The cloud-based platform known as Galaxy for analysis of gigantic datasets
- Assessing vast but raw data
- Using Trimmomatic and FastQC for bettering data quality
Prerequisites for this bioinformatics online course
Some prerequisites associated with this bioinformatics certification online course are:
- You must have studied chemistry and biology at high school 10th-grade level
- You must enjoy Biology
- Elementary Statistics such as interpreting charts, histograms, and box-and-whisker plots
Who should take this course?
Software professionals who wish to learn bioinformatics online will benefit from the course.
Review Meeta Sunil:
Yes…It is really a good course at refreshing the biology basics of DNA.
8. Practical Bioinformatics I – [Udemy]
| Rating | 4.8 |
| Enrolled | 139 students |
| Duration | 6.5 hours on-demand video |
| Instructor | Ahmed Karam |
| Certification | Yes |
| Paid | Yes |
| Return or refund policy | 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee |
| Cons | Some parts of the course are too basic even for a novice learner. |
Learning the different manipulation and tools can enable you to understand files, their outputs, and components. In addition, it broadens your horizons in bioinformatics applications in general, and the practical application will be on nucleic acids.
In the first part of this bioinformatics online course, you will study DNA Sanger Sequencing because of its massive popularity and importance. So, the instructor will take you through:
- Explanation of the Sanger Sequencing method – the problems, causes, and the files it produces
- Practical application to open and manipulate the Sanger Sequencing files, employing three different programs
In the second part of this one of the best bioinformatics certification online, you will study the High-throughput Sequencing, a basis of the newest analysis research and nucleic research. So, the instructor will take you through:
- Different apps of High-throughput Sequencing in various fields
- Common High-throughput Sequencing methods, such as Illumina, Ion Torrent, Pacific Biosciences, and Oxford Nanopore.
In the third part of the bioinformatics online training, the instructor will take you through bioinformatics files, the raw material for biologists where sequences, alignments, variations, and annotations are stored. These include files, such as:
- FASTQ
- FASTA
- Genbank
- GTF/GFF3
- BED
- SAM/BAM
- BCF/VCF
The final part of this best bioinformatics online class is more practical-oriented, wherein you will work on the concepts studied until now. You will solidify your understanding of:
- Sequence Manipulation Suite 2.
- EMBOSS.
- Packages on the Galaxy platform:
- Seqtk
- Bedtools
- Samtools
- Bcftools
Learning Outcomes
A few things you will learn in this bioinformatics certification online course are:
- Sanger sequencing method
- Common High-throughput sequencing applications, methods, and platforms
- Extraction, converting, merging, splitting, and/or removing features, sequences, alignments, or variations
- Different ways of using biological data in various researches
- How to use more than 40 (currently 43) bioinformatics programs in addition to explaining their parameters
- Also, using more than 20 (now 21) bioinformatics programs without defining their parameters
Prerequisites
It is one of the best bioinformatics online courses. However, it is a beginner-friendly course and needs just a web browser and an internet connection.
Who should take this course?
This course is suitable for life science students.
Review Nisha Biotech:
Best course for Bioinformatics enthusiasts. Good work.
Best Bioinformatics Online Classes – Bonus Picks
1. Clinical Bioinformatics: Unlocking Genomics in Healthcare – Offered by The University of Manchester – [FutureLearn]
In this FutureLearn bioinformatics online training, you will learn about the role of clinical bioinformaticians in healthcare and how their work has helped in the genomics revolution.
It is a free five-week course and will demand a weekly study of two hours. The instructor tries to bridge the gap between cutting-edge science and the delivery of genomic medicine in clinical practice through the course.
Once you are through with the course, you will know how vital the role of Clinical Bioinformatician is in ensuring the beneficial opportunities of genomic medicine towards patient care.
The good thing about this course is that it is self-guided. So, you can take it at your pace. Across the course, you will meet learners who are enrolled in the same course as you. With them, you can share your ideas and engage in active discussions in the comment section.
Learning Outcomes
Some things that this bioinformatics online course will teach you are:
- Understanding the role of clinical bioinformaticians and how they can impact a patient’s journey
- Learning how clinical bioinformatics offers a pivotal bridge between the cutting edge research of genomic medicine with the sensitivities and practicalities in a clinical setting
- Knowing about the different tools and technologies used by a clinical bioinformatician for filtration and classification of the information from the human genome
- Exploring the different stages of the clinical bioinformatics workflow
- Application of the knowledge of the clinical bioinformatics for clinical case studies
- Learning the legal and ethical considerations, which are to be made when working with genomic data
- Investigating the challenges in developing bioinformatics to support the genomic revolution in healthcare
Who should take this course?
This course is suitable for:
- People who have an interest in the application of genomics in healthcare
- Current healthcare professionals who wish to learn about the clinical bioinformatics role
- Practicing healthcare professionals will benefit from this bioinformatics online course too.
Prerequisites
For this bioinformatics online class, there are no prerequisites as such. You do not necessarily need prior knowledge or experience in bioinformatics or genomics.
The medical terminology is used in the course. Though the instructor will explain the same, some familiarity of the same may help with this best bioinformatics certification online.
2. Bioinformatics Graduate Certificate – [Harvard Extension School]
This course will help you learn to compile, identify, analyze, and communicate genetic and biological data. You can apply this knowledge to initiatives, including drug discovery and development, disease research, and genome analysis.
An incredible thing about this bioinformatics online class is that it will bag you a certification. Also, you will be working with your peers from cellular biology, molecular biology, medical science and research, software development, and scientific programming.
Learning Outcomes
A few things covered in this bioinformatics online course are:
- Latest bioinformatics tools and topics
- Understanding of information DNA sequencing and assembly
- Learning about the probability and statistics and sequence alignment
- Familiarity with BLAST output
- Getting well-acquainted with sequence alignment
- Being thorough with functional genomics and ORF prediction
- Knowing about the phylogenetics
- Detailed understanding of sequence, gene, and protein databases
- Knowledge of some social and ethical considerations
- Computer science and programming understanding via the employment of data structures, algorithms, encapsulation, string manipulation, security, resource management, web development, and software engineering
- Knowledge of programming languages, such as Java, Python, R, C++, and SQL
- Acquiring knowledge on focused topic areas, such as bioinformatics algorithms, genomics, medical informatics, and proteomics
Learner career outcomes
- Twenty-five percent of people who took this bioinformatics online class used their certificate towards ALM Degree
- Eighty-four percent of students who took this bioinformatics online course are working full-time in the field.
- Fifty percent of students pursued the Certificate to Deepen Expertise or Advance Career.
How to bag a certification?
To earn a certification with this best bioinformatics online training, you should:
- Complete the four certificate courses for graduate credit
- Earn a minimum of a B grade in all four courses
- Complete all four whole courses in a span of three years
Prerequisites
For this course, you must take:
- One programming course
- One molecular biology course
- One elective course
- One introduction to bioinformatics course
3. Computational Biology – [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]
This bioinformatics certification online course from MIT has three basic components:
- The textbooks
- Projects you will work on
- Assignments (without solutions)
This course will elaborate on the machine learning and algorithmic foundations of computational biology. This course is hands-on and will include both theoretical and practical learning.
You will study current research frontiers and the foundational topics in computational biology. More so, in this one of the best bioinformatics online class, you will directly be working with the current large-scale biological datasets. Your instructor for this course is Prof. Manolis Kellis.
Related: Top Biochemistry Courses, Best Immunology Courses, Anatomy and Physiology Classes
Conclusion
So, these are the top 11 best bioinformatics online courses. We have sincerely tried to include every information on these bioinformatics courses, but if you want further details on the course, you can click on the annexed link.
