22145 Immunological Bioinformatics Course Programme Fall 2024

General information

Where and when

Wednesday from 8 to 12 in building 208, holdlokale 3/065, , starting on Wednesday, Sep 4 at 8:00.

Teachers

• Carolina Barra Quaglia — Associate professor, course responsible.

• Morten Nielsen — Professor, course responsible.

Teaching assistant

• Astrid Brix Saksager — PhD student

Course content

The course aims to introduce the students to state-of-the-art methods within computational immunology.

There is a strong focus on introducing the methods in context with immunology as a domain-specific knowledge area. Furthermore, an introduction to the theory of the methods will be followed by practical exercises, enabling the student to independently perform analyses. The course covers immunological bioinformatics and computational vaccinology with an outlook on infectious diseases, cancer immunotherapy, and autoimmunity.

The course is taught in two parts. Part 1 covers lectures and group-based exercises and part 2 will cover group-based project work aiming at creating a full project workflow.

See also the course base about 22145.

Curriculum

There is no formal textbook. The curricula consist of lectures and exercises performed in class, supplemented with various papers and book chapters which will be made available 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.

Hand-ins

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 10/11 have built-in functions for converting any printable file to PDF.

NB: It is possible to hand in as a group. We would much rather receive one group hand-in than several identical logbooks.

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 beginning of the next lecture.

Exam

The exam consists of a group oral project presentation with individual questions at the end of the course, and a final 2-hour written exam. The grade is based on an overall assessment of both parts of the exam. It is a requirement that the oral presentation is completed, and the written exam is passed, to pass the entire course. 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 for information on ChatGPT, 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.

Chatbots are allowed but you should state in your answer that you have used them.

DTU Learn Link

• Link to this year's DTU Learn page: https://learn.inside.dtu.dk/d2l/home/215856

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 DTU Learn.

If somebody writes a message in "Discussion", you can comment on it. If you see a message you agree with, 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 just after the autumn break in DTU evaluation.

Lecture & exercise plan

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

Wednesday, Sep 4 — Introduction & databases

Lectures:

• Introduction to immunological bioinformatics — Carolina Barra Quaglia.
• Databases — Carolina Barra Quaglia.

Slides: All slides will be made available on DTU Learn.

Exercises:

Wednesday, Sep 11 — B cell epitopes

Lecture: B cell receptors and B cell epitopes — Carolina Barra Quaglia

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercise:

Wednesday, Sep 18 — Allergenicity prediction

Lecture: Allergens — Carolina Barra Quglia

Curriculum: Virtual Ribosome — software article (PDF).

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercises:

Wednesday, Sep 25 — MHC binding predictions

Lecture: MHC binding predictions part 1 — Morten Nielsen.

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercise:

Wednesday, Oct 2 — MHC binding predictions

Lecture: MHC binding predictions part 2 — Morten Nielsen.

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercise: BLAST

Wednesday, Oct 9 — Antigen Processing and Immunogenicity

Lecture: Antigen Processing — Carolina Barra Quaglia

Lecture: Immunogenicity prediction — Carolina Barra Quaglia

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercises:

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Autumn holiday 

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Wednesday, Oct 23 — TCR interaction models and TCR repertoires

Lecture: TCR interaction models (@XX) and TCR repertoires — Invited Speaker (TBD)

Exercise:

Wednesday, Oct 30 — Vaccine design

Lecture: Vaccine design — Morten Nielsen

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercise:

Wednesday, Nov 6 — Weight matrices and other prediction methods

Lecture: Introduction to prediction methods, especially Weight Matrices — Henrik Nielsen

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercises:

Wednesday, Nov 13 — Beginning Project work

Lecture: Short introduction to project work — Carolina Barra

Slides: on DTU Learn.

Exercise: PSI-BLAST

Wednesday, Nov 20 — Project work

Lecture: No LECTURE

Wednesday, Nov 27 — Project work

Lecture: No LECTURE

Wednesday, Dec 4 — Project work poster session

Agenda for the poster presentations: TBD

Exam

Wednesday, Dec 18

Winter exam E5-A 2024: Go to https://eksamen.dtu.dk/ and find 22145.