Bioinformatics 

Learning outcomes

By the end of this session you should:

• Describe the process of assembling Next Generation sequencing reads

• Successfully translate codons using a codon table

• Reflect on the concept of mutations

• Use online bioinformatics tools to align protein sequences

• Use bioinformatics tools to create a phylogenetic tree

Activities

Activity 1: The Assembling a Genome Game

When there is an outbreak of a new infectious disease such as COVID, scientist try to decode the genome of the causative agent (in the case of COVID it is a virus) to understand how it causes disease. Scientists can also learn about the source of the causative agent from the genome. The process of decoding a genome is called sequencing.

As you already know genetic material is made up of ATGCs. This is especially true for humans.  The process of sequencing a genome allows scientists to see these A,T,G and Cs on “paper”.

As genomes are very very long strands of A,T,G and Cs (The human genome is about 5 ft long. Think about the height of Kim Kardashian). As such, sequencing machines have to chop it up into small fragments in order to sequence it. The task of bioinformaticians is to assemble the small sequenced fragments back together. Once assembled we can analyse it and find out the proteins it encodes and the traits that those proteins infer.

 Your tutuor will guide you through a game that will introduce the principles of Next generation sequencing and genome assembly.

Activity 2: Phylogenetic analyses of Proteins

Through a series of activites and hands on bioinformatics tasks, you will learn how to construct and interprete a phylognetic tree.