BIOINFORMATICS|COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY|SYSTEMS BIOLOGY|GENOMICS|PROTEIN SEQUENCE ANALYSIS|PROTEIN

The module has five themes: (1) Genomics (including gene finding, transcription factor binding site prediction, disease genes, applications in therapy etc.),...

Computational and Systems Biology (BIOC0016)

The module has five themes: (1) Genomics (including gene finding, transcription factor binding site prediction, disease genes, applications in therapy etc.), (2) Computing (including basics of programming, computer hardware, relational databases and machine learning), (3) Analysis of protein sequences (including an introduction to resources, sequence alignment, structural and/or functional motif recognition, estimation of significance, etc.), (4) Omics and systems (including transcriptomics and ideas of systems biology), (5) Analysis of protein structure (including structure comparison, fold classification, structure prediction, protein evolution, etc.).

In addition to lectures you will complete an online bioinformatics practical and analyse a ‘mystery protein’ using the tools and resources you have introduced to in the lectures

By the end of this 15-credit module, students should have:

1. acquired a solid grounding in theoretical and practical aspects of computational molecular biology 2. become familiar with current approaches to nucleic acid and protein sequence analysis, and with the concepts of protein structure analysis

3. extended their skills in data interpretation and have understood the often-conflicting concepts of mathematical and biological significance

4. been introduced to the World Wide Web and have developed an understanding of its use as a tool for accessing biological data

5. had experience in writing a concise laboratory report

Indicative lecture topics (based on 2021/22 syllabus)

Computing
	Gene finding
	TFBS finding
	Sequence alignment methods
	Sequence alignment and searching – BLAST, dynamic programming
	Multiple sequence alignment and profiles
	Biological databases
	Sequence analysis protocols
	Structural classification
	Transcriptomics
	Protein interaction and networks
	Machine learning in Bioinformatics
	Homology modelling of antibodies
	Bioinformatics in a medical context
	Drug docking and design