Due to the Covid situation the lecture will be held remotely (via videos, posted in moodle). The exam will be held in-class, if the virus allows it. Otherwise, it will be also remote. Things might change, however, possibly on short notice.

It is deeply recommended to hear both lectures (Structural Bioinformatics and Genome Analysis & Transcriptomics).

Lecture notes:

There are no lecture notes but all slides will be provided via KUSSS.

Please pay attention to the Big Picture provided in KUSSS!!!

Motivation and course outline

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of life sciences and computational sciences that deals with the development and application of methods for storing, retrieving, and, in particular, analyzing biological data. The massive data amounts produced by recent and currently emerging high-throughput biotechnologies provide unprecedented potentials, but also pose yet unseen computational challenges – making bioinformatics an essential success factor for the advancement of fields, such as, molecular biology, genetics, medicine, and pharmacology.

The goal of this course is to provide an overview of foundational and computational aspects of 3D structures of biological macromolecules, such as, DNA, RNA, and proteins. The main goal of structural bioinformatics is to provide computational approaches for predicting and analyzing 3D structures. Understanding the 3D structures of biological macromolecules is crucial for understanding their function. Applications of structural bioinformatics are oriented towards medical fields and pharmacological research, especially, drug design.

Topics:

• RNA-seq
• DNA analysis
• Databases for 3D structures
• Secondary structure prediction
• Structural alignment (3D similarity)
• 3D prediction