Abstract

Doc number: 243

Abstract

Background: Teaching bioinformatics at universities is complicated by typical computer classroom settings. As well as running software locally and online, students should gain experience of systems administration. For a future career in biology or bioinformatics, the installation of software is a useful skill. We propose that this may be taught by running the course on GNU/Linux running on inexpensive Raspberry Pi computer hardware, for which students may be granted full administrator access.

Results: We release 4273π , an operating system image for Raspberry Pi based on Raspbian Linux. This includes minor customisations for classroom use and includes our Open Access bioinformatics course, 4273π Bioinformatics for Biologists . This is based on the final-year undergraduate module BL4273, run on Raspberry Pi computers at the University of St Andrews, Semester 1, academic year 2012-2013.

Conclusions: 4273π is a means to teach bioinformatics, including systems administration tasks, to undergraduates at low cost.

Details

Title
4273[pi] : Bioinformatics education on low cost ARM hardware
Author
Barker, Daniel; Ferrier, David EK; Holland, Peter WH; Mitchell, John BO; Plaisier, Heleen; Ritchie, Michael G; Smart, Steven D
Pages
243
Publication year
2013
Publication date
2013
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712105
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-14-243
ProQuest document ID
1426647072
Copyright
© 2013 Barker et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.