Lecture 1 - RH Flashcards
What is bioinformatics?
Bioinformatics is the analysis and conceptualisation of complex biological information and this is done mostly via computers.
What are the 3 areas of bioinformatics?
1 - Databases (Store and manage large datasets)
2 - Algorithms (Determine relationship between members of dataset)
3 - Analysis tools
Why are computers necessary in bioinformatics?
Volume of data is large
Many tasks are highly repetitive
Why is there so much data in databases nowadays?
Lots of improved sequencing methods and genome projects as well as the therapeutic potential that was realised.
What were the first organisms to be sequenced?
1995 - Bacteria
1997 - Yeast
1998 - Worm
2004 - Human
What can be done with genetic information?
Genes can be found and used to predict protein sequences
Relationships can be analysed between genes
Analyse evolutionary relationships
Predict the proteome of an organism
What is the ultimate goal of bioinformatics?
To predict structure of a protein from the primary sequence. This is not yet possible
How can protein domains and motifs be predicted?
Using the sequence
How is the protein structure solved?
Crystallography
How can related structures be modelled?
Comparison to solved structures
How are ligands assessed?
In silico
What does in silico mean?
conducted or produced by means of computer modeling or computer simulation.
How are databases updated? How is this different to the past?
In the past a CD-ROM was sent to institutions to update nucleic acid databases. This has changed now to the use of the internet.
What are some nucleotide databases to be considered?
NCBI
DDBJ (Japan)
EMBL
What are some protein databases to be considered?
SwissProt
PDD (3D structure)
