Final health care speaker
Bioinformatics is an up-and-coming career!
Jeff Sander, graduate student at Iowa State University, recently spoke to Elgin High sophomores, juniors, and seniors. He described to them his schooling in the new area of bioinformatics. Graduating with a major in computer science, he was able to enter a new program that links biology and computer program design.
Jeff stated that the use of computers is perfect for studying biological areas such as the study of DNA because of the large amounts of repeating data. He stated that there was no way any team of individuals could organize the millions of base pairs that are found in an individual's DNA, but by using a computer, it made the organization possible.
This is a relatively new field and new programs are being instated at various institutions, including Iowa State and UNL.
Jeff's current project is that of "zinc fingers," a gene product that will potentially be able to cleave DNA in any desired location similar to restriction enzymes, which are much more limited in their cleavage sites.
The biology class is currently studying genetic engineering, so Jeff's talk fit right into their other new knowledge!