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SCIENZE PROPEDEUTICHE

Teaching Staff

LUCIA CALCAGNO - Module FISICA APPLICATA - FIS/07 - 3 CFU
SALVATORE ALAIMO - Module Bioinformatics - INF/01 - 3 CFU
LORENZO LUPO - Module Medical Statistics - MED/01 - 2 CFU

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Learning Objectives

• Bioinformatics
  

  Objective of the course is the acquisition of methods for the analysis of biological sequences and structures and the capability of searching in in biological databases (eg. Genes, sequences, functional domains). Starting from primary sequences of nucleic acids or proteins can hypothesize the function, evolutionary history and structure. The tools used to achieve these objectives are the public databases and the tools for the analysis and visualization of such kind of data.

  Knowledge and understanding: Students will gain knowledge on methods for the analysis of biological sequences and for searching in biological databases. In particular students will be able to search on database of sequences and domains. Also, public databases available on NCBI will be presented together with software for the and the analysis and visualization of biological data. Finally, students will acquire the basic tools for the analysis of the transcriptome.
  Applying knowledge and understanding: identify the appropriate tools to manipulate data and extract knowledge underlying; solve problems through the use of appropriate software in bioinformatics.
  Making judgments: Through guided exercises, the students will acquire the basic skills necessary to deal with the analysis of new biological sequences, hypothesizing the function, study the transcriptome.
  Communication skills: the student will acquire the necessary communication skills and expressive appropriateness in the use of technical language within the general framework of the analysis of biological data.
  Learning skills: The course aims, as the goal, to provide students with the necessary basic theoretical methods and practices in order to address and solve problems concerning the analysis of biological data.

• Medical Statistics
  

  The course will provide basic elements to let the student be able to describe individual and population based biological events through syntetic indeces. Moreover, the student should be able to identify and use elementary metodologies of analysis of numerical data.

Course Structure

• Bioinformatics
  

  Lectures

  Should teaching be carried out in mixed mode or remotely, it may be necessary to introduce changes with respect to previous statements, in line with the programme planned and outlined in the syllabus.

• Medical Statistics
  

  Classroom lecturers using blackboard and tracing papers

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Detailed Course Content

• Bioinformatics
  

  The course is organized into lectures that provide a theoretical basis coupled with exercises for learning the use of bioinformatics tools in the field of medicine.

  PROGRAM

  1. Introduction
  2. Pairwise and Multiple alignment
  3. Biological Databases: General Databases (NCBI, EMBL), Specialized Databases (OMIM, CIVIC, Drugbank, KEGG Pathway)
  4. Tools for the analysis of the transcriptome: Microarray, Next Generation Sequencing, Analysis of the transcriptome: Biomarkers
• Medical Statistics
  

  1. Measurers: numerical, ordinal and nominal

  2. Descriptive measurers: central tendency and variability

  3. Probability and Bayes Theorem

  4. Probability distributions: binomial, Poisson and gaussian

  5. Hypothesis tests and their meaning

  6. Epidemiology: sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, incidence and prevalence rates

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Textbook Information

• Bioinformatics
  
  • Jambeck, Gibas “Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills, O'Reilly
• Medical Statistics
  

  J. Fowler, P. Jarvis, M. Chevannes "Statistica per le professioni sanitarie" Ed. EdiSES

  Other elementary statistic texbooks

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Open in PDF format Versione in italiano