Howdy, if you managed to stay awake in your high school biology class, you might remember the central dogma of molecular biology. It states that DNA makes RNA and that RNA serves as a template for assembling amino acids into proteins according to the genetic code. However, what your biology teacher may not have told you is that some bacteria assembles certain many proteins without using an RNA template. For example, some antibiotics, molecular bullets that bacteria used to kill other bacteria. And many proteins that do not rely on the genetic code and instead use an even more complex, non-ribosomal code. >> In this class we will see that, to crack this nonribosomal code, we first need to learn how to compare giant proteins responsible for the production of antibiotics and bacterial cells. If we don't align these proteins correctly, then the elusive hidden message revealing the nonribosomal code will disappear. This is just one of many problems in modern biology that relate to sequence comparisons. To learn how to align sequences of individual genes and proteins, we will take a sightseeing detour to Manhattan. >> And after comparing individual genes, we will zoom out to compare entire genomes containing billions of nucleotides. We will see that for nearly every human gene, there is a. However, this genes occur in very different arrangements on 1the human and mouse chromosome. These arrangements differ because our genomic architecture has been shaped by rare and powerful mutations called genome rearrangement. You can think of a genome rearrangement as a genomic earthquake that moves around huge chunks of DNA, often from chromosome to. Rearrangements also often shuffle [INAUDIBLE]. For example, some types of Leukemia are characterized by exchanging large genomic segments between chromosomes 9 and 22. By learning exactly where this rearrangement happens, scientists developed a miracle drug called Gleevec that has saved the lives of thousands of leukemia patients. >> Now we're in California here. Where earthquakes occur much more often than in most other places on the planet. So our question that we are going to ask is, does a similar phenomenon occur with genomic earthquakes? In other words, are the breakage points of genome rearrangements scattered throughout the human genome with no apparent rhyme or reason, or do they occur at fragile regions, or genomic fault lines. Where this breakage is occurring over and over again. If yes, where are these fragile regions in the human genome and how do they relate to cancer? We hope that you're going to join us to decipher the nonribosomal code and look for these fragile regions in the human genome. >> Although these instructors may appear crazy they are not quite as mad as they look. Dr. Pavel Pevzner is a distinguished professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego and leading authority on bioinformatics. He’s dressed this way because he sometimes thinks that he's the sheriff of bioinformatics, a frontier discipline underpinning the digital revolution in biology and personalized medicine. Dr. Phillip Compeau is an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Melon University. To learn why he is dressed this way you'll need to take this course or read the textbook. Bioinformatics Algorithms, An Active Learning Approach, coauthored by the two speakers.