Syllabus
1) Introduction to bioinformatics, overview of available methods
2) Data - how are they generated? (genomics, X-ray crystallography, microarray technology)
3) Data - where to find them? (databases)
4) Sequence alignment - algorithms, how to use it?
5) Looking for similar sequences - BLAST, PSI-BLAST
6) Structural alignment - algorithms, how to use it?
7) Analysis of protein structures
8) Prediction of 3-D structures of proteins
9) Homology modelling and drug design
10) Prediction of genes
11) Phylogeny
12) Microarray data analysis
Annotation
Laboratories around the world produce massive amount of new nucleotide and protein sequences, gene expression profiles, 3-D structures and other data of biological character. To illustrate this fact, the number of known nucleotide sequences grew from 59 millions to 80 millions last year (2006). The database of 3-D structures expanded by 20 % in the same year and more than 1500 organisms are sequenced at the moment. With an ever-increasing amount of data available, grows even the significance of bioinformatics. Bioinformatics collects, archives and most importantly analyses and attempt to find a meaning and useful information in this explosively growing sea of data. Bioinformatics is one of the most dynamically developing areas of biomedical research and basic knowledge of bioinformatics methods becomes quickly indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in doing biomedical research.
The aim of this course is to introduce students with basic, but also modern promising bioinformatics methods. These methods will be shown and explained in lectures and later used in a series of practicals. These "hands-on" practicals are designed to show how to take an advantage of bioinformatics in every day life in a laboratory. The practicals were tested for a long time and successfully on students of the Uppsala university, Sweden. This course is suitable for the second- or higher year students of biology or chemistry who want to specialize within the biomedical field of research. A basic knowledge of structure of biomacromolecules (nucleic acids, proteins) is an advantage, but it is not required to have it. To successfully finish the course, one has to attend the practicals and pass the final written exam.