30+ Free Tutorials · Real Datasets · Live Spreadsheets

Learn Bioinformatics
The Fun Way

Step-by-step interactive guides for RNA-Seq, single-cell, GWAS, population genomics, CNV, epigenomics, and 25 more topics. Every threshold justified. Every formula shown live. Guided by Byte.

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Every category links to a curated set of tutorials. Pick your domain and dive in.

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Most Popular

Featured Tutorials

High-quality, end-to-end guides with downloadable scripts and live interactive spreadsheets.

Intermediate
DESeq2edgeRR
RNA-Seq Differential Expression

DESeq2, edgeR, and limma-voom end-to-end. padj thresholds, MA plots, volcano plots, and GO enrichment — every decision justified.

Start Tutorial
Advanced
Seurat v5UMAPR
Single-Cell RNA-Seq with Seurat

Cell Ranger output to annotated clusters: QC, normalization, PCA, UMAP, marker discovery, and cell-type annotation with Seurat v5.

Start Tutorial
Intermediate
GATK4bcftoolsBash
GATK SNP Calling Best Practices

BQSR, HaplotypeCaller, VQSR, and hard-filter thresholds. Covers germline and multi-sample joint genotyping with full parameter rationale.

Start Tutorial
Advanced
vcftoolsselscanLive
Population Genetics: Fst, π, Tajima's D

Every formula shown in a live interactive spreadsheet. Windowed Fst, nucleotide diversity, Tajima's D, and iHS/XP-EHH selection scans.

Start Tutorial
Advanced
IQ-TREE2BEAST2R
Phylogenetics Deep Dive (8 Modules)

Site models, Bayesian MCMC, gene vs species trees, divergence dating, ancestral state reconstruction, biogeography, and macroevolution.

Start Series
Advanced
MACS3HOMERLive
Epigenomics: ATAC-seq & ChIP-seq

Tn5 shift, TSS enrichment, IDR reproducibility, MACS3 peak calling, motif analysis, DESeq2 differential accessibility, and deepTools heatmaps.

Start Tutorial
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Unique Feature

Live Interactive Spreadsheets

Many tutorials embed fully interactive Excel-like spreadsheets that recalculate every formula in real time as you change inputs. No more black-box statistics — see exactly how Fst, LOD scores, Tajima's D, CNV depth ratios, and GWAS lambda inflation are computed.

  • Edit any input cell — all dependent formulas update instantly
  • Every formula column shows the exact Excel-style expression
  • Covers Fst, LOD, Tajima's D, CNV depth ratio, GWAS λ, FRiP, D-prime and more
  • Works in the browser — no install, no login
Try a Live Spreadsheet
Live Fst Calculator — edit cells below
Populationp (allele freq)2pq (heterozygosity)Fst formula
Pop A0.720.403=2*B2*(1-B2)
Pop B0.310.428=2*B3*(1-B3)
Fst (Ht-Hs)/Ht0.142=(D5-D6)/D5
In the real tutorial, all yellow cells are fully editable with instant recalculation
Byte the lab mascot
Your Mentor

Meet Byte

Your pocket-sized bioinformatics scientist who appears throughout every tutorial — explaining, warning, and waiting with you through the long compute jobs.

Byte teaching
Explains Every Concept
Breaks down complex statistics into clear language
Byte pointing
Justifies Every Threshold
padj < 0.05? Bonferroni vs FDR? Byte tells you why
Byte waiting
Waits With You
Keeps you company during long MCMC runs and alignment jobs
Byte warning
Prevents Pitfalls
Warns about common errors before you make them
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About This Site

IndianElucidBiology

We believe bioinformatics should be accessible, enjoyable, and transparent. Every tutorial is written from scratch with updated tools, detailed parameter explanations, and real threshold-selection guidance — so you understand why, not just how.

From a biology student doing their first RNA-Seq to a researcher exploring GWAS fine-mapping or long-read haplotype phasing, these guides meet you where you are and take you further.

AS
Ankush Sharma

Founder, IndianElucidBiology

Passionate about making bioinformatics accessible to everyone — from bench biologists to computational scientists.

30+Tutorials published
150+Bioinformatics tools covered
10+Live interactive spreadsheets
100%Free & open source forever
What's Happening

IEB Hub

News, featured content, new tutorial additions, and the community spotlight — all in one place.

Featured This Month

Vibe Science: AI CLIs Are Transforming Bioinformatics

Claude, OpenAI Codex, and Gemini CLI can now generate full RNA-seq pipelines, debug your Snakemake wildcards at 2am, and read your entire genome annotation in one prompt. Our new tutorial walks through all three tools with real bioinformatics use cases, prompt templates, and an honest ethics section.

March 2026 ~35 min read AI · CLI · Bioinformatics
Contributor of the Month — March 2026
AS

Ankush Sharma

Founder & Lead Author · IndianElucidBiology

This month's spotlight recognises the launch of 6 new Nature Methods 2024 tutorial pages plus the Vibe Science guide — bringing the total catalogue to 37+ end-to-end tutorials. Every page was hand-written, formatted, and tested to ensure accuracy and reproducibility.

7 tutorials this month 37+ total Nature Methods 2024

Want to be featured here?

Submit a tutorial, fix a bug, or help with documentation. Every contribution counts.

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What's New in Bioinformatics
Read All News
Tool Update

2024

Seurat v5: Sketch-Based Analysis & Bridge Integration

Seurat v5 introduces sketch-based analysis for datasets of millions of cells without loading everything into memory, plus Bridge Integration for linking scRNA-seq to ATAC/multiome. BPCells backend enables 10M+ cell analyses on a laptop.

Seurat v5 docs
Tool Update

Oct 2024

Bioconductor 3.20 Released — 2,300+ Packages

Bioconductor 3.20 (R 4.4) added 73 new software packages including major updates to SingleCellExperiment, scran, DESeq2 1.44, and new spatial transcriptomics packages. The BiocManager install workflow is now the standard for all R genomics work.

Bioconductor release notes
Tool Update

2024–2025

nf-core Pipelines Hit 100+ Workflows — Nextflow DSL2 Standard

The nf-core community now maintains 100+ production-ready Nextflow DSL2 pipelines covering RNA-seq, scRNA-seq, ATAC-seq, variant calling, amplicon sequencing, and more. Every pipeline is containerised, versioned, and benchmarked. nf-core/rnaseq v3.14 includes STARsolo and Alevin-fry for ultra-fast quantification.

Browse nf-core
AI & LLMs

Early 2026

AlphaFold 3 Expands to DNA, RNA & Small Molecules

DeepMind's AlphaFold 3 predicts joint structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and ligands in one model — a major leap for drug target ID and RNA structural biology. Model weights are available for non-commercial research via the AlphaFold Server.

Read in Nature
Tool Update

2024

Scanpy 1.10 & scverse Ecosystem Mature

Scanpy 1.10 lands with faster UMAP via RAPIDS-singlecell GPU acceleration, improved AnnData sparse handling, and tighter integration with the scverse ecosystem (Squidpy, Muon, scvi-tools). The anndata 0.10 zarr backend enables lazy loading of 10M+ cell datasets.

Scanpy release notes
Pangenomics

2024–2025

Human Pangenome Reference Consortium Releases HPRCv2

The HPRC released a pangenome graph from 94 haplotype-resolved assemblies. vg and Minigraph-Cactus enable alignment to the pangenome, reducing reference bias in variant calling. GRCh38 is officially no longer the only valid reference for human genomics.

HPRC Portal
Sequencing

2025

Oxford Nanopore R10.4.1 Reaches Q30 Long-Read Accuracy

With Dorado v0.7+ and R10.4.1 chemistry, ONT long reads now routinely hit Q30 (>99.9% accuracy), matching Illumina short reads for SNP and indel detection. Long-read-only WGS pipelines are now clinically viable for the first time.

Oxford Nanopore
Foundation Models

2025

Evo 2: 40B Parameter DNA Language Model on 9 Million Genomes

Arc Institute's Evo 2 is trained on 9.3M genomes spanning all life domains. It generates functional DNA, predicts variant effects, and performs zero-shot gene design — effectively the GPT-4 moment for genomics. Weights are open.

Arc Institute
Tool Update

2024

Nextflow 24.x: Fusion File System & Wave Containers

Nextflow 24 introduces the Fusion virtual file system (direct S3/GCS access without staging), Wave on-demand container builds, and the Seqera Platform for enterprise pipeline monitoring. Running cloud-scale pipelines is now simpler than ever.

Nextflow blog
Single-Cell

2025–2026

Human Cell Atlas Profiles 50 Million Cells Across 35 Organs

The HCA consortium has mapped over 50 million cells across 35 tissue types, creating the most comprehensive human cell reference ever. Data is freely available via the HCA portal and CZ CELLxGENE Discover — a goldmine for annotation and benchmarking.

Explore HCA
Spatial Omics

Nature Methods 2024

Spatial Proteomics: Nature Methods Method of the Year 2024

CODEX, IMC, Phenocycler, and MIBI were collectively named Method of the Year by Nature Methods 2024. Sub-cellular resolution protein mapping in intact tissue is now routine, enabling cell-type and spatial niche deconvolution in tumour microenvironments and beyond.

Nature Methods
Tool Update

2024–2025

GATK 4.6: Improved Germline & Somatic Calling, Better CNV Support

GATK 4.6 ships improved HaplotypeCaller for short tandem repeats, updated Mutect2 with better artifact filtering, and a streamlined CNVSomaticPairWorkflow. The DRAGEN-GATK hybrid mode is now production-ready for clinical sequencing.

GATK releases
New Additions
AI
Vibe Science Tutorial
Claude, Codex & Gemini CLI for bio
Open
🔗
Tutorial
Single-Cell Multiome ATAC+RNA
Seurat · Signac · chromVAR · MACS2
Open
🎯
Tutorial
Spatial Proteomics: CODEX & IMC
DeepCell · scimap · AnnData
Open
🧬
Tutorial
Long-Read RNA-Seq & Transcript Discovery
Dorado · Minimap2 · IsoQuant · DEXSeq
Open
🗺️
Tutorial
SpatialData: Universal Spatial Omics
Zarr · Visium · MERFISH · Squidpy
Open
🤖
Tutorial
scGPT: Foundation Model for Single-Cell
33M cells · zero-shot annotation · GRN
Open
🌳
Tutorial
FastOMA: Orthology Inference at Scale
Nature Methods 2024 · HOGs · pyHam
Open
Latest Preprints bioRxiv & arXiv

A curated selection of high-impact preprints in computational biology and genomics. Updated regularly. Click titles to read on the preprint server.

bioRxiv · Single-Cell

2024

scVI 1.0: Deep Generative Models for Single-Cell Omics at Scale

The scvi-tools v1.0 paper formalises the probabilistic framework for VAE-based scRNA-seq integration, deconvolution, and differential expression. Covers SCVI, SCANVI, totalVI, and MULTIVI for multi-modal data. Now the go-to for large-scale atlas integration.

Nature Methods
bioRxiv · Genomics

2024–2025

Hifiasm 0.20: Telomere-to-Telomere Assembly with Ultra-Long ONT

The latest Hifiasm integrates ultra-long ONT reads (UL-ONT) with HiFi to produce fully phased, T2T-quality assemblies of diploid human genomes in a single run. The T2T-CHM13 assembly demonstrated the method; Hifiasm now brings it to population scale.

GitHub / Paper
arXiv · AI + Bio

2025

Geneformer: Pretrained Transformer for Single-Cell Transcriptomics Context

Geneformer (Theodoris et al., Nature 2023) is a context-aware transformer pre-trained on 30M single-cell transcriptomes. Fine-tuned for chromatin dynamics prediction, network inference, and in-silico perturbation — demonstrating transfer learning works in gene expression space.

Nature paper
bioRxiv · RNA-Seq

2024

DeltTE & satuRn: Better Tools for Differential Transcript Usage

Two tools competing for the DTU gold standard: satuRn (quasi-binomial GLM, fast, handles complex designs) and DRIMSeq (Dirichlet-multinomial). Head-to-head benchmarks show satuRn has superior FDR control on simulated and real data — now recommended over DEXSeq for transcript usage.

bioRxiv search
arXiv · ML + Genomics

2025

Enformer & Borzoi: Predicting Gene Expression from Raw DNA Sequence

Enformer (DeepMind) and Borzoi (Linder et al.) use large transformer models to predict RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, and ChIP-seq tracks directly from 196kb genomic sequence. Enables in-silico dissection of regulatory variants without any experimental assay.

Enformer paper
bioRxiv · Population Gen

2024–2025

GLIMPSE2: Ultra-Fast Low-Coverage WGS Imputation at Population Scale

GLIMPSE2 imputes low-coverage WGS (0.1–1×) to near-WGS quality using a haplotype reference panel. Orders of magnitude faster than BEAGLE for large cohorts and supports the HPRC pangenome reference. Makes large-scale population studies affordable on a sequencing budget.

GLIMPSE2 docs

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