This is an introductory to intermediate level course intended to expose participants to the exploding field of bioinformatics. The participants will gain a broad overview of various sub-divisions emerging within bioinformatics and specifics about the most commonly used tools and databases. The theory behind the underlying algorithms (how the programs work) is explained and examples are demonstrated. By the end of the course, Participants are expected to perform power searches and mine data efficiently from the biological databases. Participants will be submitting project reports after the course to obtain a certificate of achievement upon evaluation. General knowledge in Biology and basic web browsing experience is helpful, but no programming experience is necessary. Enrollment limited.

Topics :

• Bioinformatics resources on the web
• A virtual tour to primary data sources like NCBI, EBI, SWISSPROT, PDB etc.
• Common data formats used in Bioinformatics
• Basic concepts in database searching
• Protein substitution matrices such as PAM, BLOSUM series
• Protein sequence alignment methods
• Dynamic programming, heuristic methods
• NCBI Toolkit includes BLAST, PSI-BLAST
• Programming languages and modules used in bioinformatics
• Data mining skills
• Advanced searches using public databases
• Specialized databases such as PFAM, PDB, SMART, and PROSITE
• tRNA structure prediction
• Molecular phylogeny and evolution
• Gene prediction
• Road map towards becoming a professional bioinformatician

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