Bioinformática e Análise de Dados (Fmul)

Objectives

Bioinformatics: Recent scientific developments have produced a wealth of genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data publicly available in a variety of online databases. This course will provide students with the training required to extensively use databases and bioinformatics tools. Upon its completion, students will be able to work with relevant online tools for the integrative analyses of the vast amount and diversity of “omics” data associated with on their own research. Data Analysis: The objective of this unit is to provide the students with the basic knowledge of statistical concepts currently applied in scientific research, and to cement prior existing statistical knowledge. By the end of the unit, the students should be able to apply the adequate statistical tests to a given dataset under study and interpret the results. There will be a focus on the use of statistical software, in particular SPSS, to solve practical cases.

Syllabus

Bioinformatics: We wil provide an introduction to bioinformatics tools and analysis methods. Students will learn how to search biomedical databases containing gene-centered information and “omics” data, such as that of NCBI, UCSC and Ensembl. In parallel, disease-focused data-mining platforms will be introduced. The most recent developments in genome-wide (“omics”) approaches, from microarrays to high-throughput sequencing, will be introduced. The respective basic concepts, methods and applications will be presented and discussed for each type of approach. In parallel, systems biology tools will be approached, focusing on gene regulatory networks and respective dynamics, as well as integration of “omics” data and biomedical information. Data Analysis: We will address: 1) Objectives of statistics; 2) Descriptive statistics; 3) Probability and distributions; 4) Hypothesis testing, confidence intervals and sample size; 5) Contingency tables; 6) Introduction to survival analysis.