Integrating Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics Education

Combined awareness about the power and limitations of bioinformatics and molecular biology enables advanced research based on high-throughput data. Despite an increasing demand of scientists with a combined background in both fields, the education of dry and wet lab subjects are often still separated. This work describes an example of integrated education with a focus on genomics and transcriptomics. Participants learned computational and molecular biology methods in the same practical course. Peer-review was applied as a teaching method to foster cooperative learning of students with heterogeneous backgrounds. The positive evaluation results indicate that this approach was accepted by the participants and would likely be suitable for wider scale application.