BIOINFORMATICS

This is a six credits course: five credits will be from lessons while one credit will be from practical activities, either the implementation and of some algorithm or the in-depth investigation of the literature on given arguments.
The lessons are divided in three main parts.
The first part is an extensive introduction on Biology presented as a scientific field centered on Information. The mechanisms that facilitate the transmission and evolution of biological information is used to introduce some biological problems that require computational approaches and bioinformatics tools.
The second part of the course describes the main algorithms used for the alignment of biological sequences, including those designed for “next generation sequencing”. The algorithms used for de novo genomic assembly are also described.
Finally, the third part of the course covers several aspects of bioinformatics related to functional genomics, such as the analysis of transcription, gene prediction and annotation, the search of patterns and motifs and the prediction of protein structures. The role of Bioinformatics in individual genomic analysis and personalized medicine is also discussed.