OBIETTIVI FORMATIVI

Bioinformatics is the study of how information is represented and analyzed in biological systems, especially information derived at the molecular level. The course will focus on the methodological and technological basis of bioinformatics, they include the creation and management of standard terminologies and data representations, the integration of heterogeneous databases, the organization and searching of the biomedical literature, the use of machine learning techniques to extract new knowledge, the simulation of biological processes, and the creation of knowledge-based systems to support advanced practitioners in the field.

OBIETTIVI FORMATIVI (DETTAGLIO) E RISULTATI DI APPRENDIMENTO

Students will be provided with the basic informatic and biochemical knowledge (including molecular biology, genetics, organic chemistry, statistics and programming) essential to face complex data management problems such as predictions, gene regulation, protein-protein communication networks, as well as to use the available databases effectively / efficiently.

PREREQUISITI

• Basic knowledge of Chemistry: structure of matter, inter / intramolecular bonds, energy potentials
• Basic knowledge of biology: meaning of Mendelian genetics, the concept of evolution, nucleic acids, proteins.
• Data management and analysis
• Knowledge of logic programming

MODALITA' DIDATTICHE

48 hours of classroom lessons, unless otherwise indicated by the Ministerial guidelines

PROGRAMMA/CONTENUTO

Biological basis for Bioinformatics

Basic notions of organic chemistry and molecular biology

Notions of Genetics.

gene sequences and evolution: point mutations, gene duplication, chromosomal rearrangement

Databases of biological interest

Web platforms: EnsEMBL, GenBank, Genome Browser

Sequence Alignment (Alignment of Sequence Pairs, Alignment Algorithms, Scoring of an alignment)

Homology, identity, and similarity of genes

Similarity matrices of scoring and substitution, BLAST

Clustal. Algorithm.

Gene regulation and differential analysis

The 20 amino acids: chemical-physical characteristics, one and three letters code.

Elements of Protein Structure and prediction.

Databases of protein structures: Uniprot, Protein Data Bank, Expasy proteomics tools.

Molecular dynamics and docking simulation software

Use of R language and Bioconductor libraries

TESTI/BIBLIOGRAFIA

• Bibliography
  • Paul M. Selzer, Richard J. Marhöfer, Oliver Koch. Applied Bioinformatics. Springer International Publishing AG. Available online at the link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-68301-0
  • Slides provided by teachers