Entry requirements

60 credits within the programme including the courses Cell Biology, Structural Bioinformatics, Programming Techniques II, Probability and Statistics and Database Design I.

Learning outcomes

The course provides knowledge about and skills within the application of bioinformatic tools on typical biological issues.

After completing the course, the student should be able to

• identify and choose appropriate public databases to solve a given biological problem
• explain the principles of various types of sequence alignments
• use Perl for data management
• explain different models for pattern recognition
• outline and apply the process of making and evaluating a phylogenetic analysis based on different methods and explain the different phases
• choose and apply (for the bioinformatic problem area) existing software to given biological problems
• analyse, evaluate and compile results of bioinformatic analyses critically

Content

The course mainly deals with bioinformatics with focus on sequence data and contains the following parts and aspects:

Public bioinformatic databases, their design and search tools. Identification of coding sequences. Pair-wise and multiple sequence alignment, heuristic methods for sequence alignment Automation of bioinformatic analyses by means of Perl. Models for sequence evolution and statistical sequence comparisons. Phylogenetics; parsimony, distance methods, probability-based methods (maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses).

Instruction

The course consists of lectures and computer exercises.

Assessment

Parts of the course: Theory 2 credits; computer exercises 3 credits.

For the overall grade Pass, it is required that all computer exercises have been presented in writing or orally and are passed. The theory part is examined in a written examination