The course comprises theory and practical laboratory work. During the course, knowledge in biology, mathematics and programming is combined in order to provide skills in the use of the most common bioinformatics tools and as well as biological databases. Since the knowledge generated by modern bioinformatics methods gives rise to ethical issues, those too are discussed during this course. The introductory part of the course focuses on the use of various public databases, database organization, sequence retrieval and management, such as comparisons of protein sequences in order to find sequence similarities between proteins from different organisms. This part also includes so-called High Throughput sequencing methods, gene mapping projects and phylogenetic reconstruction. Then follows an introduction on how to handle and integrate biological information, such as gene regulation and network analysis, which are important methods for the understanding of changes in gene expression in a systems biology way. Furthermore, peptide sequences are analyzed by using chemometrics and multivariate data analysis methods in order to provide an understanding of the complex structural properties of biological molecules. The course continues with an examination of protein sequences with respect to functional and structural 3D motives and the affect mutations have on protein stability and function. The aim is to enhance the understanding of the complex structural features of biological macromolecules which can then be applied to computer-based drug design. Finally, we develop the theory and discuss practical methods for creating three-dimensional protein structures by so-called homology modeling methods, which are an important complement to experimental structure determination methods.
