R and microarray analysis workshop

1.30-3.30pm, Tuesday 5th December; repeated Friday 8th December

Bioconductor is a state-of-the-art open source and open development software project for the analysis and comprehension of genomic data. It is based on R, which is a general purpose, open source language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.

Following a brief introduction to R, covering basic mathematical operations, statistical analysis of data and plotting of functions, this workshop will intoduce you to the Bioconductor packages Affy and Plier for analysing expression measures such as MAS5, RMA and PLIER applied to Affymetrix Oligonucleotide Arrays.

From Sequence to Structure

1.30-3.30pm, Wednesday 6th December; repeated Thursday 7th December

In this workshop, we will become acquainted with the major websites, tools and file formats used in sequence analysis. Beginning with a DNA sequence, we trace the process of translating to its amino acid sequence, its near relatives, its putative function and the likely structure of the associated protein. The workshop includes visiting NCBI, Expasy and PDB websites, and using BLAST, PredictProtein, and DeepView (spdbv). No knowledge of biology is assumed, and only a general knowledge of computing (such as file saving and web browsing) is required. All tools used are available on-line or for free download. We use as examples a family of proteins called Glutathione S-Transferases or GSTs.