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.

1. BioInformatics
by Nuno Barreto
SHiFT08

2. 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

3. What this presentation is
not
• An exhaustive explanation of what
Bioinformatics is

4. Bioinformatics?

5. Bioinformatics
=
Molecular Biology + IT

6. So, that excludes other
interesting applications of IT in
the Biology related fields

7. The democratization of Biological Information

8. Geographic information systems

9. So...
What is Bioinformatics?
What is it used for?
Why has it changed the face of Biology?

10. It’s all about DNA

11. • 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

12. image from Wikipedia

13. How is it captured?

14. Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravitywave/7715395/

15. Image from http://www.dna11.com

16. images from Wikipedia

17. image from Wikipedia

18. Made at http://www.baekdal.com/web2dna

19. In fact, it’s all about String Manipulation
image from Wikipedia

20. Alignment of 27 avian influenza hemagglutinin protein
sequences
image from Wikipedia

21. Genomes

22. • Genomes are the complete set of
chromosomes of organism, which contain
its full DNA
• It includes genes
• Delimitations
• And also “junk DNA”

23. Genes
• “a gene is a portion of an organism's DNA
which contains both quot;codingquot; sequences
that determine what the gene does, and
quot;non-codingquot; sequences that determine
when the gene is active” (from Wikipedia)

24. image from Wikipedia

25. Human Genome
• 23 chromosome
pairs
• 3.2 billion DNA
base pairs
• 20 500 genes
image from Wikipedia

26. Chicken Genome
• 1 billion DNA base
pairs
• 20-23 000 genes
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/31562846/

27. Amoeba dubia Genome
• 670 billion DNA
base pairs
photo from www.behav.org/GENE/org/org_040_C.htm

28. Only 79 eukaryotic genomes
Only ~400 prokaryotic genomes
Only 27 archaeal genomes

29. 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.

30. Proteomics

31. • It’s all about discovering the sets of
proteins of an organism, knowing it’s
function

32. Protein Folding

33. • 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

34. Protein Folding
image from Wikipedia

35. Hemoglobin
image from Wikipedia

36. Folding @home
http://folding.stanford.edu/

37. Tree of Life

42. All info available through websites

43. http://www.uniprot.org

47. http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/clustalw2/index.html

50. What can we do with all this
information?

51. Better understand all organisms

52. Most importantly,
we can understand our bodies better

53. It is a great advancement in
medicine

54. • Helps in disease diagnosis and prevention
• Helps understand our response to
treatments, creating the possibility of
customized ones
• Identification of drug targets
• Gene Therapy

55. Future

56. • More advances in specific treatment
• A better comprehension of our bodies
• A better comprehension of the
relationships between organisms
• Who knows? :)

57. nbarreto@gmail.com