Using computer science to better understand biology

December 12, 2014

Associate Professor of Biology Steve Freedberg began using computer simulation modeling to teach population evolution several semesters ago. His students have developed computer programs that provide a sophisticated research tool for understanding biological systems.

Many of the students in Associate Professor of Biology Steve Freedbergs bioinformatics course arent computer science majors. Many have little experience writing code.

Yet all of them have developed computer programs that provide a sophisticated research tool for understanding biological systems.

As part of the course, many of the students use simulations to describe genetic processes, but others have used them to study population biology and evolution as well.

Freedberg began using computer simulation modeling to teach population evolution several semesters ago. The programs work by running a series of loops representing population situations.

As students continue to build off the coding done in previous semesters, their programs have begun to reach surprising levels of sophistication and usefulness.

The students are impressively autonomous on these programs, says Freedberg. While he guides their research questions and helps them interpret their results, the students have to be creative in their writing of programs.

Elaine Rood 15, for example, worked with Freedberg through the colleges Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry program to develop a computer program that starts with two populations of a species that are identical except for their sex ratio. The program loops through these populations many lifecycles until one of the populations goes extinct. The results illustrate how the sex ratio of a population affects its competitive ability.

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Using computer science to better understand biology