22111:Course plan spring 2021

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General information

Where and when

Lectures plus subsequent exercises will take place every Tuesday afternoon during the semester, starting Tuesday Feb 2 at 13:00.

In 2021, the course will be held online during the entire semester.

For online lectures and exercises, we use Microsoft Teams. The code for joining this year's team is: 

tvii8l9

Please see the MS Teams instructions!

Teachers

Teaching assistants

Course content

In this course, a large emphasis is placed on the practical usage of bioinformatics databases and tools. A typical lecture will present the theoretical aspects of the topics of the day — sometimes including a small group exercise using pen and paper — and last about an hour. The rest of the time will be spent on practical computer exercises, where the teachers and teaching assistants will be ready to help.

See also the course base about 22111.

Curriculum

There is no formal textbook. The curriculum consists of the exercise guides, supplemented with various papers and chapters which will be made available on this homepage or on DTU Learn. Please note that all exercise guides are mandatory curriculum — including the answers to the exercises which will be made available on DTU Learn after each exercise.

Computers

Hardware

You must bring your own laptop to the exercises, and it must be able to connect to DTU's wireless network. The type of computer / operating system is not important; Windows, Mac or Linux will all work fine. An iPad or an Android tablet, on the other hand, will not be good enough. A Chromebook will also not be enough (unless you have succeeded in installing a Linux distribution on it, but in that case we assume you know what you're doing).

In some of the exercises ("PDB/PyMOL", "Malaria vaccine", and "Old exam questions"), you will work with the molecular visualization program PyMOL. This is rather difficult to control by a touchpad, so please remember to bring a mouse. The mouse should have two buttons plus a scroll-wheel.

Software

  1. Most importantly: an updated internet browser (e.g. Google Chrome, FireFox, Opera, Edge for Windows or Mac OS, or Safari for Mac only). NB: You must have more than one browser installed; Safari for Mac or Edge for Windows may have glitches with some bioinformatics websites, and in those cases it is important to be able to switch to an alternative browser.
  2. Java runtime engine is needed for running some of the software we use in the course, including jEdit (see below). Download from here: https://adoptopenjdk.net/ - choose OpenJDK 11 and HotSpot.
    • NOTE: Oracle java 8 from https://java.com/en/ is NOT good enough for jEdit anymore. jEdit version 5.6 and later needs java 11 which is available from the above link (and from a few other places). AdoptOpenJDK is open source and free, even for commercial use, which is not the case for Oracle java anymore.
    • IMPORTANT TIP for Windows users: You need to enable the sub-feature named "set JAVA_HOME variable" when installing java 11.
  3. A plain text editor for working with, e.g., sequence files. We recommend jEdit, which you can download for free from http://www.jedit.org. If you experience unsolvable problems installing or running jEdit, there are alternatives, e.g. Geany.
    • NOTE: The jEdit developers have not signed the installation package, therefore both Windows and MacOS will complain when you first attempt to install it, and you have to insist that it is OK to run the program. For Macs, this is a bit complicated, see the instructions in the exercise guide.

Other software will be installed during the exercises.

Hand-ins

As preparation for the computer-based exam, each participant or group must write a "logbook" with answers to the questions posed in the exercise guides. After the exercise, you should upload the logbook to DTU Learn.

You decide which software you prefer for writing the logbook — e.g. Microsoft Word, LibreOffice (free), Apache OpenOffice (free), Pages for Mac, Google Docs or similar. You should be able to insert screenshots in the logbooks for documentation purposes. Microsoft Word has a built-in screenshot tool. Both Windows 10 and Mac OS also have dedicated screenshot tools.

Regardless of your choice of writing software, the result must be handed in as a PDF file. LibreOffice and Google Docs can make PDFs directly. MacOS and Windows 10 have built-in functions for converting any printable file to PDF. Users of earlier versions of Windows must install a separate program. Several free alternatives exist, e.g. PrimoPDF. (It can be a good idea to install PrimoPDF even for Windows 10 users, it provides some extra options and the resulting files take up less space).

Please do not copy the questions from the exercise guide to your logbook. The hand-in module on DTU Learn has a system for plagiarism detection, which will raise an alarm if significant portions of your hand-in are identical to documents found on the internet — and that includes the exercise guides.

NB: The hand-ins do not affect your grade — they are mainly meant as a preparation for the exam. They are also a means for us to check the understanding of the teaching; if we can see that many participants have made the same mistake, we will try to explain the issue better at the next lecture.

Exam

The 22111 exam is electronic; i.e. you must bring your own computer, and you will not get a paper copy of the questions. The questions will be made available as a PDF file on the DTU online exam system. The only accepted hand-in format is PDF.

All aids are allowed at the exam; you can bring any books, papers or notes. You will have open access to the internet which includes all the materials and websites we have used during the course. You are also allowed to search information on Google, Wikipedia, etc., but you are not allowed to communicate with others through e-mail, Facebook, chat, or file sharing websites. The internet traffic will be logged during the exam to ensure that these restrictions are kept.

Just like in the weekly hand-ins, we kindly ask you: Please don't copy the questions in your answer document — that might result in the answer being flagged as plagiarism.

DTU Learn & Inside

Link to this year's DTU Learn page: https://learn.inside.dtu.dk/d2l/home/60286

Link to this year's DTU Inside group: https://cn.inside.dtu.dk/cnnet/element/633911/

Evaluation and feedback

We will be very happy to receive comments, suggestions, criticisms, or praise at any time during the semester. You can:

  • send them by email to the teachers, or
  • write them under "General feedback" in "Discussion" in the DTU Inside group (found in the Course content menu), or
  • write them in the "General" channel in MS Teams.

If somebody writes a message in the "Discussion" or "General" channel, you can comment on it. If you see a message you agree on, please comment "Agree!" so that we can see that it is not just one person's opinion.

In addition, we will conduct a mid-term evaluation in DTU evaluation.

Lecture & exercise plan

Note: This is a preliminary plan, changes may occur!

Tuesday Feb 2 — Introduction & taxonomy

Lectures:
  • Introduction to the course, bioinformatics, and computers — Henrik Nielsen.
  • Evolution and taxonomy — Rasmus Wernersson.
Slides: will be made available on DTU Learn.
Curriculum: Brief Introduction to Evolutionary Theory — Written by Anders Gorm Pedersen.
Test of prior knowledge: Go to https://evaluering.dtu.dk/, click "Test of prior knowledge" under 22111, and fill out the form (it's anonymous). Spend max. 10 minutes on it.
Exercises:
  1. Plain text files and jEdit
  2. Taxonomy databases
Extra material

Tuesday Feb 9 — GenBank

Lecture: DNA as Biological Information — Rasmus Wernersson
Curriculum: DNA sequencing tutorial — source: IDT Tech Vault
Handout for the lecture: "Base-calling" exercise (for printing) [PDF] / "Base-calling" exercise (version for on-screen viewing) [PDF].
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercise: Using the GenBank database — (Answers)
Reference material for the exercise: GenBank + FASTA format [PDF]
Background material (supposedly known):
Extra material:

Tuesday Feb 16 — Translation & UniProt

Lecture: Protein databases — Henrik Nielsen
Curriculum: Virtual Ribosome — software article (PDF).
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercises:
  1. Exercise: Translation - Virtual Ribosome — (Answers)
  2. Exercise: The protein database UniProt — (Answers)
Background material (supposedly known):
Extra material:

Tuesday Feb 23 — Pairwise alignment

Lecture: Pairwise alignment — Henrik Nielsen.
Curriculum: Page 35-55 in Immunological Bioinformatics (PDF: on DTU Learn → General information and files → Textbook excerpt).
Handout for the lecture: Alignment scores
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercise: Pairwise alignment

Tuesday Mar 2 — Protein structure, PDB & PyMOL

Remember to bring a mouse for this day's exercise. The mouse should have two buttons and a scroll wheel.
Lecture: Protein 3D structure — Paolo Marcatili
Curriculum: Protein Structure (Wikipedia)
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Link to advanced course:
Software for installation: PyMOL
Note: you will need the license file found at DTU Learn under this week's topic.
Exercises:
  1. PyMol tutorial (PDF) — basic usage of PyMOL.
  2. Protein Structure and Visualization — (Answers; NB: the last section labelled "PyMOL magic" is NOT curriculum, just a tip!)
Extra material:

Tuesday Mar 9 — BLAST

Lecture: Introduction to BLAST — Rasmus Wernersson.
Curriculum: section 3.2.5 → 3.3 (i.e. pages 47-52) in Immunological Bioinformatics (PDF: on DTU Learn).
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercise: BLAST
Extra material:
Videos about BLAST from NCBI: (Video introduction to NCBI's web interface and Expect Values) NCBI's YouTube channel

Tuesday Mar 16 — Case: Malaria vaccine

Lecture: Malaria and vaccines — Thomas Lavstsen, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen
Curriculum: Malaria — Causal Agents / Life Cycle
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercise: Malaria vaccine

Tuesday Mar 23 — Sequence information & logo-plots

Lecture: Sequence information & logo-plots — Henrik Nielsen
Curriculum:
  1. Pages 68-80 in Immunological Bioinformatics (PDF: on DTU Learn).
  2. Pages 1-8 of "Information theory primer" (PDF)
    • Read also the appendix on logarithms (especially Log2) if needed!
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Handout for the lecture: How to construct sequence logos (PDF)
Mid-term evaluation: Go to https://evaluering.dtu.dk/ and click "Mid-term evaluation" under 22111
Exercise: DNA and Peptide Logos

File:Easter-egg-free-to-use-cliparts.png Easter holidays File:Easter-egg-free-to-use-cliparts.png

Tuesday Apr 6 — Weight matrices and other prediction methods

Lecture: Introduction to prediction methods, especially Weight Matrices — Henrik Nielsen
Curriculum: Same as last week!
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Handouts for the lecture: How to estimate pseudo frequencies
Exercise: Construction of weight matrices
Link to advanced course:
22125: Algorithms in bioinformatics

Tuesday Apr 13 — PSI-BLAST

Lecture: PSI-BLAST — Rasmus Wernersson
Curriculum:
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercise: PSI-BLAST

Tuesday Apr 20 — Multiple alignments

Lecture: Multiple alignment — Henrik Nielsen
Curriculum: RevTrans (article)
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercise: Multiple Alignments

Tuesday Apr 27 — Phylogenetic trees

Lecture: Phylogenetic Reconstruction: Distance Matrix Methods — Anders Gorm Pedersen
Curriculum:
  1. Introduction to Tree Building, PDF on Learn
  2. Evolutionary trees (minus the section "How to reconstruct an evolutionary tree")
  3. Understanding Evolutionary Trees, PDF.
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Handout for lecture: Reconstructing a distance tree
Software for installation: FigTree tree-viewer
IMPORTANT NOTE for Windows users: Download the .zip file and unpack it. Then, go to the "lib" subfolder and double-click the .jar file. The .exe file will not work.
Exercise: Phylogeny
Link to advanced course:

Tuesday May 4 — Bioinformatics in practice + old exam questions

Lecture: "Real life case": Bioinformatics and Systems Biology in precision medicine - Rasmus Wernersson
Curriculum: (None - lean back and enjoy)
Slides: on DTU Learn.
Exercise: We train on the old exam set from 2020 - available on DTU Learn.

Exam

Wednesday May 26

Summer exam 2021: Go to https://eksamen.dtu.dk/ and find 22111.

Here is a guide to the Digital Exam interface (in Danish and English).

The assignment will be accessible from XX:XX on Wednesday May 26.

Checklist for computers

Check here whether your computer has all the software needed for the exam: Checklist for computers

Link collection

A quick overview of the websites we have used in the course: Link collection

FAQ

Questions we have received and answered: FAQ

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