Introduction to Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is a discipline that applies discrete mathematics, computer science, and statistics to the field of molecular biology. Over the past few decades, a tremendous amount of information related to molecular biology was produced due to rapid developments in genomic and other molecular research technologies and developments in information technologies.

The objective of bioinformatics is to increase the understanding of biological processes. For this, bioinformatics provides and develops databases, algorithms, computational and statistical techniques and theory to solve formal and practical problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data. In particular, bioinformatics develops and applies computationally intensive techniques (e.g., pattern recognition, machine learning, visualization, data mining) to achieve this goal. Major research areas include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, protein structure prediction, protein structure alignment, protein-protein interaction, and modeling of evolution.

The course will provide an introduction to the field of bioinformatics. Participants will not need specific previous knowledge.

The class will take place

• Thursday, 12:15-13:45, M - ES42, room 0526.

The class will start by October 21.

The labs will be held by Svetlana Torgasin,

• Tuesday, 13:45-14:30, E - SBS95, room E2009P3a,
• Friday, 11:00-11:45, E - SBS95, room E2054P4.

The labs will start by October 26. In each week, we will assign homework in the form of two or three problems that will be discussed in the labs. The assignments will be available in the form of PDF files via Stud.IP.

The organizer of the course will also be Svetlana Torgasin. If you have any questions, please direct them to her.

The course will partly follow the book

• K.-H. Zimmermann: Introduction to Protein Informatics, Kluwer, Boston, 2003.

The book is available as a set of slides (with courtesy of Kluwer) that can be downloaded (for personal use) via Stud.IP.

Contents:

• Introduction to molecular biology: amino acids, proteins, DNA, genes, genomes.
• Pairwise and multiple alignment of biomolecular sequences.
• Modeling of evolution by phylogenetic tree methods.
• Prediction of secondary protein structure.
• Prediction of tertiary protein structure.

The exam will be written by using computer facilities.

Finally, for recreational purposes, I'd like to recommend to read some books about the life of Charles Darwin, notably The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle.