S03 - Computational biology
Biology Master, ENS
Year : 1 (M1)
Semester : 1 (S1)
Course code :
BIO-M1-S03-S1
Course name :
Computational biology
Coordinators :
Anne-Sophie Benoiston
Pierre Vincens
ECTS :
3 ECTS for the DENS/DSN
Course with limited number of places. To enroll for this course, it is mandatory to directly contact the coordinators before September.
Keywords :
Bioinformatics, genomics, proteome, gene, protein structure, images, models
Prerequisites for the course :
Basic Python programming and Unix command-line is mandatory for this course. Students without this background can enroll for the course “BIO-M2-E01-S1 Training in mathematics and computer science” that takes place before the beginning of the semester. Students that will not enroll to this training will be asked to demonstrate their programming skills.
Course objectives and description :
The aim of this course is to introduce students to bioinformatics, by consolidating their knowledge in fundamental principles, as well as opening to current research topics in computational biology.
The course includes programming (Python) applied to biology, and conferences in computational biology. The program evolves each year, and covers topics among : nucleic and proteic sequence analysis (determining functional and structural properties based on primary sequences, search for common characteristics among a collection of sequences, …), management of genomic information (annotation), approaches to predict tridimensional structure of proteins (“threading”, analogy,…), interactions between molecules, images analyses, modeling.
Assessment / evaluation : :
The evaluation consists in a written report of an informatics or bioinformatics project (in Python).