bioinformatics
DESCRIPTION
A description of how technology has changed the face of Biology, specially in the fields of genetics, proteomics, and evolution. It includes a brief history, examples of usage, and a look into the future.TRANSCRIPT
BioInformaticsby Nuno Barreto
SHiFT08
What this presentation is
• A general description of what bioinformatics is
• A voyage in most aspects involved
• A view of the technologies used
• A view of the future
What this presentation is not
• An exhaustive explanation of what Bioinformatics is
Bioinformatics?
Bioinformatics=
Molecular Biology + IT
So, that excludes other interesting applications of IT in
the Biology related fields
The democratization of Biological Information
Geographic information systems
So...
What is Bioinformatics?
What is it used for?
Why has it changed the face of Biology?
It’s all about DNA
• DNA is a nucleic acid that contains a “blueprint”
• This “blueprint” is used to construct every part of the organism, it is all Nature needs to reproduce an organism and keep it functioning correctly
image from Wikipedia
How is it captured?
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravitywave/7715395/
Image from http://www.dna11.com
images from Wikipedia
image from Wikipedia
Made at http://www.baekdal.com/web2dna
In fact, it’s all about String Manipulation
image from Wikipedia
image from Wikipedia
Alignment of 27 avian influenza hemagglutinin protein sequences
Genomes
• Genomes are the complete set of chromosomes of organism, which contain its full DNA
• It includes genes
• Delimitations
• And also “junk DNA”
• “a gene is a portion of an organism's DNA which contains both "coding" sequences that determine what the gene does, and "non-coding" sequences that determine when the gene is active” (from Wikipedia)
Genes
image from Wikipedia
Human Genome
• 23 chromosome pairs
• 3.2 billion DNA base pairs
• 20 500 genes
image from Wikipedia
Chicken Genome
• 1 billion DNA base pairs
• 20-23 000 genes
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/31562846/
Amoeba dubia Genome
• 670 billion DNA base pairs
photo from www.behav.org/GENE/org/org_040_C.htm
Only 79 eukaryotic genomes
Only ~400 prokaryotic genomes
Only 27 archaeal genomes
Still a lot of genomes to be sequenced,considering the 1.8 million classified species,
and the possibility of existing 10 to 100 million unknown.
Proteomics
• It’s all about discovering the sets of proteins of an organism, knowing it’s function
Protein Folding
• RNA is the blueprint of Proteins
• Proteins structure is very important for it’s functioning
• Therefore, it is crucial to know its shape in order to know its function
Protein Folding
image from Wikipedia
Hemoglobin
image from Wikipedia
Tree of Life
All info available through websites
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/clustalw2/index.html
What can we do with all this information?
Better understand all organisms
Most importantly,we can understand our bodies better
It is a great advancement in
medicine
• Helps in disease diagnosis and prevention
• Helps understand our response to treatments, creating the possibility of customized ones
• Identification of drug targets
• Gene Therapy
Future
• More advances in specific treatment
• A better comprehension of our bodies
• A better comprehension of the relationships between organisms
• Who knows? :)
