Instructor: Shaojie Zhang
Lectures: M/W 3:00-4:15pm BA 221
Office hours: Shaojie Zhang, HEC 311, M/W 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm or by appointment.
Background:
The course should be
self-contained. However, a concise introduction to Biology can be
found at the
Bioinformatics Algorithms web-site (chapter 3). Also, the text of Mol. Biol. of the Cell can be searched online.
This course will summarize computational techniques for comparing genomes on the DNA and protein sequence levels. Topics include state of the art computational techniques and their applications: understanding of hereditary diseases and cancer, genetic mobile elements, genome rearrangements, genome evolution, and the identification of potential drug targets in microbial genomes.
This course is designed for the advanced level computer science graduate students. Graduate students with entry-level background in bioinformatics research (e.g. after taking CAP 5510 or equivalent courses) are welcome to take this course. Biological background students who are interested in comparative genomics are also welcome.
Textbook:
E. Koonin and M. Y. Galperin: Sequence-Evolution-Function: Computational Approaches in Comparative Genomics, Springer, 2002. (COMP). There is online version of this book:Link. We will also distribute complementary lecture notes and papers along the course for these topics.
Dan Gusfild Algorithms on strings, trees and sequences. (ALG) This book covers most of the algorithms we will discuss in the class.
Current research papers (2003-2010) from "Nature", "Science", "PLOS Biology", "Genome Research", "Bioinformatics", and etc. are distributed along the course for different research topics.
Grading: Summary (40%), Paper presentations (60%).
Summaries Guide Line (for Research Paper Reading and Presentation)
Read the paper before lecture. Write a one-page summary of the paper that will
be discussed on class. Make sure write down the biological problem and the computational problem hidden inside the paper. Send the summary by email to me before the lecture (12:00 pm sharp)
Paper Presentation Guide Line: Read paper first, meet with me 1-2 weeks before lecture to discuss the paper. Meet with me 3-5 day before lecture to discuss the slides. Slides due at noon (sharp) the lecture. Please make the appointments throught emails.
Topics and Tentative Schedule:
| Date | Topic | Slides | Book References/Papers | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L1: 01/11 | Course Introduction | |||
| L2: 01/13 | 1. Genome Alignments 1.1 Overview of Sequence Alignment Algorithms | COMP 4.3/ALG 11 | ||
| 01/18 | No Class (MLK Day) | |||
| L3: 01/20 | 1.2 Overview of Sequence Alignment Algorithms (2) | ALG 14 | ||
| L4: 01/25 | 1.3 Overview of Sequence Alignment Algorithms (3) | COMP 4.4/ALG 11 Smith-Waterman Algorithm Myers-Miller Algorithm (Linear Space Alignment) BLAST | ||
| L5: 01/27 | 1.4 Overview of Sequence Alignment Algorithms (4) | ALG 14 | ||
| L6: 02/01 | 1.5 Overview of Sequence Alignment Algorithms (5) | ALG 12.5.2 | ||
| L7: 02/03 | 1.6 Genome Alignment Algorithms | LAGAN and Multi-LAGAN: efficient tools for large-scale multiple alignment of genomic DNA, Genome Research | ||
| L8: 02/08 | 2. Genome Rearrangements and Genome Evolutions 2.1 Genome Rearrangements | Towards a Computational Theory of Genome Rearrangements | ||
| L9: 02/10 | 2.2 Cancer genomics | Reconstructing tumor genome architectures, Bioinformatics | ||
| L10: 02/15 | 2.3 Whole genome duplications | Proof and evolutionary analysis of ancient genome duplication in theyeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Nature | ||
| L11: 02/17 | 2.3 Micro rearrangements | Microinversions in mammalian evolution, PNAS | ||
| L12: 02/22 | 3. Whole Genome Sequencing | Fragment assembly with short reads, Bioinformatics De novo fragment assembly with short mate-paired reads: Does the read length matter?, Genome Research | ||
| L13: 02/24 | 3.2 Genome Assembly | see above | ||
| L14: 03/01 | 4. Gene Prediction | |||
| L15: 03/03 | 5. Gene Regulation and Micro-array | |||
| 03/08,10 | Spring Break | |||
| L16: 03/15 | 6. Repeats in Genomes 6.1 Repeat Identifications | De novo identification of repea families inlarge genomes, Bioinformatics | Peter Clements | |
| L17: 03/17 | 6.2 Transposable Elements Identifications | Identification of transposable elements using multiple alignments of related genomes, Genome Research | Stephen Fulwider | |
| L18: 03/22 | 6.3 ALU Evolutions | Whole-genome analysis of Alu repeat elemen reveals complex evolutionary history, Genome Research | Sonal Gadia | L19: 03/24 | 6.4 Transposable elements and pi-RNA | Population dynamics of PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) and their targets in Drosophila , Genome Research | Travis Roe |
| L20: 03/29 | 7 Motifs Discovery in Genomes 7.1 Phylo_HMM | Evolutionarily conserved elements invertebrate, insect, worm, and yeast genomes, Genome Research | Pengju Shang | |
| L21: 03/31 | 7.2 Motifs Discovery Through Comparative Genomics | Systematic discovery of regulatory motifs in human promoters and 3' UTRs by comparison of several mammals, Nature | Zhengkai Wu | |
| L22: 04/05 | 7.3 Regulatory Network | Assigning roles to DNA regulatory motifs using comparative genomics , Bioinformatics | Chris Zonca | |
| L23: 04/07 | 8 Finding Non-coding RNAs in Genomes 8.1 Introduction and RNAz | 1. Secondary Structure Prediction for Aligned RNA Sequences, Journal of Molecular Biology 2. Consensus Folding of Aligned Sequences as a New Measure for the Detection of Functional RNAs by Comparative Genomics, Journal of Molecular Biology 3. Fast and reliable prediction of noncoding RNAs, PNAS 4. Mapping of conserved RNA secondary structures predicts thousands of functional noncoding RNAs in the human genome, Nature Biotchnology | ||
| L24: 04/12 | 8.2 RNA Clustering | Inferring Noncoding RNA Families and Classes by Means of Genome-Scale Structure-Based Clustering, Plos Computational Biology | Sonal Gadia | |
| L25: 04/14 | 8.3 RNA Clustering | RNA stem-loops: To be or not to be cleaved by RNAse III, RNA | Peter Clements | |
| L26: 04/19 | 8.4 sRNA | IntaRNA: efficient prediction of bacterial sRNA targets incorporating target site accessibility and seed regions, Bioinformatics | Chris Zonca | |
| L27: 04/21 | 9 Metagenomics | MEGAN analysis of metagenomic data, Genome Research | Pengju Shang | |
| L28: 04/21 | 9.2 Metagenomics | UniFrac: a New Phylogenetic Method for Comparing Microbial Communities, APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY | Zhengkai Wu | |
| L29: 04/26 | 10 Next-Generation Sequencing Technologies Applications | A comprehensive catalogue of somatic mutations from a human cancer genome, Nature | Travis Roe | |
| L30: 04/26 | 10.2 Next-Generation Sequencing Technologies Applications | Population genetic inference from genomic sequence variation, Genome Research | Stephen Fulwider |
Research:
We are always looking for motivated students. If you are looking for research projects, please get in touch.