Bioinformatics Centre
Encyclopedia
The Bioinformatics Center conducts interdisciplinary research in bioinformatics
and is in charge of a masters program in bioinformatics. The center is affiliated with the Institute of Molecular Biology within the Faculty of Science
of the University of Copenhagen
.
The center is headed by Anders Krogh
, who pioneered the use of hidden Markov models in bioinformatics
, together with David Haussler
. The center further consists of six postdocs and about 17 PhD
students.
There are four different subgroups in the center, each focussing on different topics:
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...
and is in charge of a masters program in bioinformatics. The center is affiliated with the Institute of Molecular Biology within the Faculty of Science
University of Copenhagen Faculty of Science
The Faculty of Science at the University of Copenhagen consists of both mathematical and natural sciences, and is divided into 11 institutes including the Natural History Museum of Denmark...
of the University of Copenhagen
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
.
The center is headed by Anders Krogh
Anders Krogh
Professor Anders Krogh is a bioinformatician at the University of Copenhagen, where he leads the university's bioinformatics center. He is well known for his pioneering work on the use of hidden Markov models in bioinformatics , and is co-author of a widely used textbook in bioinformatics...
, who pioneered the use of hidden Markov models in bioinformatics
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...
, together with David Haussler
David Haussler
David Haussler is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He is also Professor of Biomolecular Engineering and Director of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz; director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences on...
. The center further consists of six postdocs and about 17 PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
students.
There are four different subgroups in the center, each focussing on different topics:
- Micro-RNA group: micro-RNA's are small RNA molecules with important roles in regulation of gene expressionGene expressionGene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product. These products are often proteins, but in non-protein coding genes such as ribosomal RNA , transfer RNA or small nuclear RNA genes, the product is a functional RNA...
. The group analyses the biology of micro-RNA's using computational methods and develop tools that are useful for experimental biologists. - Non-coding RNA group: Many RNA molecules play a functional role in the cell that is different from the classic role of serving as a template for protein synthesis. The group works on secondary structure prediction and multiple alignment of non-coding RNANon-coding RNAA non-coding RNA is a functional RNA molecule that is not translated into a protein. Less-frequently used synonyms are non-protein-coding RNA , non-messenger RNA and functional RNA . The term small RNA is often used for short bacterial ncRNAs...
's. - Promotor analysis group: The group develops statistical and bioinformatics methods to analyze the regulation of transcriptionTranscription (genetics)Transcription is the process of creating a complementary RNA copy of a sequence of DNA. Both RNA and DNA are nucleic acids, which use base pairs of nucleotides as a complementary language that can be converted back and forth from DNA to RNA by the action of the correct enzymes...
of eukaryoticEukaryoteA eukaryote is an organism whose cells contain complex structures enclosed within membranes. Eukaryotes may more formally be referred to as the taxon Eukarya or Eukaryota. The defining membrane-bound structure that sets eukaryotic cells apart from prokaryotic cells is the nucleus, or nuclear...
geneGeneA gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
s. This includes modelling of epigeneticsEpigeneticsIn biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- -genetics...
, transcription factorTranscription factorIn molecular biology and genetics, a transcription factor is a protein that binds to specific DNA sequences, thereby controlling the flow of genetic information from DNA to mRNA...
binding sites, core promoters and transcription start sites - Structure group: the group develops proteinProteinProteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
and RNARNARibonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....
3-D structure prediction methods based on graphical modelGraphical modelA graphical model is a probabilistic model for which a graph denotes the conditional independence structure between random variables. They are commonly used in probability theory, statistics—particularly Bayesian statistics—and machine learning....
s and Bayesian networkBayesian networkA Bayesian network, Bayes network, belief network or directed acyclic graphical model is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of random variables and their conditional dependencies via a directed acyclic graph . For example, a Bayesian network could represent the probabilistic...
s, directional statistics and Markov chain Monte CarloMarkov chain Monte CarloMarkov chain Monte Carlo methods are a class of algorithms for sampling from probability distributions based on constructing a Markov chain that has the desired distribution as its equilibrium distribution. The state of the chain after a large number of steps is then used as a sample of the...
methods.