Introduction to Bioinformatics
Professional Training
Starting from :1st February
Course 1: Introduction to Bioinformatics (For after School students) 4 Months Course
Course Description:
Bioinformatics combines computer programming, big data, and biology to help scientists
understand and identify patterns in biological data. It is particularly useful in studying
genomes and DNA sequencing, as it allows scientists to organize large amounts of data.
The bioinformatics software’s and tools have helped in drug discovery as they help in
understanding protein-protein, protein-ligand and various other interactions. This course
will help in complete understanding and application of Bioinformatics software and
databases to meet the modern-day needs.
Key Points:
• Introduction to Bioinformatics
• Biological Databases
• In silico sequence analysis
• Gene amplification and expression analysis
• Function prediction from protein sequence
• Hands of practice of multiple bioinformatics tools
Trainer Introduction:
Mr. Zeeshan Ahmed is currently working as Junior Scientist of Biotechnology at Green
Biotec UG Bremen, Germany since May 2022. Previously, he was a Research Officer/Teaching
Assistant at Government College University, Lahore Pakistan and also worked as a
researcher at Food and Biotechnology Research center at Pakistan Council of Scientific and
industrial research. He has 11 international publications with 51+ impact factor and have
expertise in biotechnology techniques like gene cloning, fermentation technology,
Immunology, Research methadology, Bioinformatics, Molecular diagnostics, Antibodies
development, Antivirals. Virology, Microbial genetics, Recombinant DNA technology,
Biosafety and Bioethics, Bioremediation, Immunoassays, Tissue culture, Media optiization,
cultivated meat production, Development of protein based downstream and cost estimation
of upstream processing, Cell engineering (e.g genetic enginnering of bacteria, yeat and
eukaryotic cells) for recombinant proteins production, microbiology, protein purification,
and Cloning of genes. Mr. Zeeshan has full command on overlooking all biotechnology labs
primarily working of recombinant product production and immunoassays. However, most
of his lab and research experience is in bioprocess development, virology, and molecular
biology techniques. He has experience with following techniques/lab testing: Isolation
and screening or microbes, acid-fast staining, flow cytometry, western blotting, southern
blotting, nothern blotting, Agarose gel electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, Dialysis,
Chromatrography techniques like HPLC, Ion-exchange etc, Immunoassays like ELISA,
RIA etc, Transformation of cells, comptetent cell formation, Protein purification, Cell groeth
analysis, spectrometry, DNS. These testing techniques are usually performed on biospecific
antibodies, biosimilars, food and breverages, ex-vivo gene and cell therapy, monoclonal
antibodies (MABs), Polyclonal antibodies (PABs), antibodies, dairy products, RNA/mRNA
therapy/ vaccines, tissue engineering and isolation. Mr. Zeeshan has expetise in using
Bioinformatics softwares like Pimer3, PyMOL, ClustalOmega, OligoCalc etc. These softwares
and websites are used for insilico studies of genes and proteins to find their structure and
sequence. Moreover, he has expetise in using automated nuclic acid extraction kits for fast
extraction of plasmids and chromosomal DNA, QA/QC testing,
and automated gel dock systems.
Course Objectives:
To acquaint students with basic concepts of biological databases, phylogenetic & sequence analysis, functional analysis of gene and proteins.
After completing this course student should be able to:
Define bioinformatics with practical point of view, have knowledge of Bioinformatics tools and its applications, and also acquainted knowledge of in silico analysis of gene and its products. You will get hands on experience on the following software
1. Utilization of PubMed for literature search.
2. Use of biological databases including Genbank. at NCBI, Uniprot and ENA at EMBL, PDB at RCSB.
3. Protein sequence alignment
4. Primer-3.
Who Should attend?
After School students Students seeking knowledge about Bioinformatics from basics to advanced level
Medical Doctors
Students want to analyze effective bioinformatics tools in their study
Course Contents:
Week 1
Introduction to Bioinformatics: What is bioinformatics? Scope and applications; Difference b/w bioinformatics and
computational biology; Other related fields of Bioinformatics; Problems in molecular and bioinformatics approach.
Week 2-3
Biological Databases: Basic features of databases, Literature search through PubMed; Major biological databases
of gene and protein sequences; Structure databases; Retrieving gene and protein sequences and structures.
Week 4-8
In silico sequence analysis: Genome sequencing- importance and role of bioinformatics in handling genome sequencing data; Genome browsers; Ensemble, MAPview etc.; Gene finding in bacterial and eukaryotic genomes; Nucleotide and protein sequence analysis; finding protein-coding regions in nucleotide sequence, finding known domains in the proteins; Sequence alignment; pairwise and multiple alignment, global and local alignment; Editing aligned sequences; Searching profiles and patterns in sequences; Dynamic programming for local and global sequence alignment through scoring matrices; Exercise with examples; Uploading data: submission of protein and DNA sequence
to NCBI, MBL, DDBJ.
Week 9-10
Gene Amplification and Expression analysis: Gene and protein functions analysis, alternative promoters through EPD, databases of alternative splicing and alternative translation initiation; Restriction analysis, Primer designing, in silicoPCR analysis; Microarrays and expression analysis in normal and diseased condition.
Week 11-12
Function Prediction from Protein Sequence: Similar sequence-similar structure-similar function paradigm; Functional annotations of biological sequences.
Week 13-16
Hands on Practice of various Bioinformatics database and tools like ClustalW, Primer3, OligoCalc, BLAST, EMBL, PDB SUM,
Uniprot. etc.