We are delighted to present a ring lecture and seminar introducing students to Modern Bioinformatics. Please register early as the course is often oversubscribed.

Bioinformatics is a particularly heterogeneous discipline. Rather than only presenting basic material in talks, the focus in this course is on different lecturers showcasing exciting areas of research, modern methods, and current challenges in the field. An aim is to share our excitement with students by providing insight into some of the most interesting and relevant research challenges of these times. The course also offers an invaluable opportunity for meeting several of the key Bioinformatics group leaders in Vienna, and to learn about institutes offering research opportunities towards an M. Sc. thesis in Bioinformatics.

Guest lecturers will introduce the areas of their respective research interests. Each lecture will conclude with a recommendation of scientific papers for further reading and discussion in the seminar.

After the initial lecture presentations, a selection of papers and seminar days for presentations will be provided online (below, updates to be announced during the lectures). You need to select your paper through an online system and provide a critical discussion in the January seminar (instructions will be announced in the lectures and will appear below). Plan for 10-15 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes for discussion. When you are not presenting yourself, you are expected to actively participate in the discussion.

Suggested papers and complementary materials

If you have any difficulties obtaining a copy of the manuscripts from the journal web-page or the below links, please contact us.

David Kreil – Quantitative and functional genomics

1. An unbiased comparison of hybridization and sequencing based platforms for expression profiling that can discriminate alternative transcripts and spliceforms from the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda:
   Raghavachari et al. (2012) A systematic comparison and evaluation of high density exon arrays and RNA-seq technology used to unravel the peripheral blood transcriptome of sickle cell disease. BMC Medical Genomics, 5, 28.
   For additional background, see our paper in Nature Biotechnology, A comprehensive assessment of RNA-seq accuracy, reproducibility and information content by the Sequencing Quality Control Consortium.
2. An integrated (and controversial?) analysis combining measurements across multiple species from the lab of Ziv Bar-Joseph at Carnegie Mellon University:
   Lu et al. (2007) Combined analysis reveals a core set of cycling genes. Genome Biology 8, R146.

If you are interested in in learning about our research interests, please browse our web-site or look at a compilation of typical research projects where you could get involved (contact us for updates).
If you want to take part in an exciting international data analysis challenge, have a look at CAMDA and sign up to the announcements mailing list and check out the contest data sets. Since 2017 CAMDA has run as a full regular conference track of ISMB, the preeminent bioinformatics conference worldwide.

Peter Sykacek – Probabilistic Methods in Bioinformatics

1. J. Jumper et al. (2021) Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. Nature 596, 583–589.
2. J. Abramson et al. (2024) Accurate structure prediction of biomolecular interactions with AlphaFold 3. Nature 630, 493–500.

Lecture notes (last updated 2016)

Thomas Rattei – Microbial Metagenomics

1. J. Shaw and Y. W. Yu (2024) Rapid species-level metagenome profiling and containment estimation with sylph. Nature Biotech in print, doi: 10.1038/s41587-024-02412-y.

Lecture notes (last updated 2024)

Christoph Flamm – Autocatalysis

1. M. G. Howlett, A. H.-J. Engwerda, and S. P. Fletcher (2024) Information transduction via fuel-controlled chemical waves. Chem 10, 2861–2871.
2. M. Ter Harmsel, R. M. Oliver, S. A. Runikhina, A. S. Y. Wong, W. T. S. Huck, S. R. Harutyunyan (2023) A catalytically active oscillator made from small organic molecules. Nature 621, 87–93.
3. M. G. Howlett, A. H.-J. Engwerda, R. J. H. Scanes, and S. P. Fletcher (2022) An autonomously oscillating supramolecular self-replicator. Nature Chem 14 805–810

Lecture notes (last updated 2024)

Chris Oostenbrink – Molecular dynamics simulations

1. L. Casalino et al. (2020) Beyond Shielding: The Roles of Glycans in the SARS-CoV‐2 Spike Protein. ACS Central Science, 6, 1722–1734. >Binding Modes and Metabolism of Caffeine.
2. C. Öhlknecht et al. (2021) Efficient in silico saturation mutagenesis of a member of the caspase protease family. J. Chem. Inf. Model, 61, 1193–1203.

Lecture notes (last updated 2022)

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