Algorithms in Molecular Biology
Syllabus & Reading

This is a more of a "What's Happened" than a "What's Coming Up" syllabus. Lectures are subject to adjustment depending on the pace of the class. In particular, lectures marked "(optional)" will be dropped if the course is going slower than I am currently expecting.

There will not be a required book for this class, most topics will be covered by research papers. This is mainly due to the fact that the field changes rapidly and many books are dated by the time they hit the shelves.

Having said that, for a lot of the topics in this class a copy of Durbin, Eddy, Krogh & Mitchison's book Biological Sequence Analysis is good reading. It is especially good at covering HMM's and other probabilistic approaches. It is "suggested" but not "required".

Two optional "reference" books are Waterman's Introduction to Computational Biology and Gusfield's Algorithms on Strings Trees and Sequences. If you really want a bible you may want to get the newly published Handbook of Computational Molecular Biology.

Note that the links to Amazon above are for convinience and not an endorsement of the seller or an indication that these are the lowest prices on these books.


Computing Structural Features: Rama Natarjan's Notes
Lec # Topic Date Reading Lecture Notes Comments
Sequences & Trees
1. Overview & What is the genome Jan 11 EBI's Intro to Biology: Sections 1-3
JGI's Intro to Genomics
Lecture Slides
2-3. Genome assembly & String Graphs Jan 13 & 18 Algorithmic:
Batzoglou et al: Arachne
Pevzner et al: Euler
Myers: String graphs
Historic:
Weber & Myers: Human Whole-Genome Shotgun Sequencing
Green: Against a Whole-Genome Shotgun
Green: Whole-Genome Shotgun Disassembly
Bidirected Graphs: Alex Hertel's Notes

Paths/Flows: Ulrich Germann's Notes

4-8. Evolution, HMMs (CpGs), Intro to PhylogenyJan 20, 25 Speed et al: Tutorial on Evolution and Phylogeny
Rabiner's tutorial on HMMs
Huson's notes on HMMs & CpGs
Phylogeny: Tomas Babak's Notes

HMMs: Midori Hyndman's Notes

More HMMs: Graham Taylor's Notes

Longest common subsequence, Substitution matricesJan 27 LCS & Alignment: Graham Taylor's Notes
Alignment (Needleman-Wunsch, Smith-Waterman)Feb 1 Speed: Lecture Notes on Sequence Alignment
Myers & Miller: Alignments in Linear Space
Local Alignment: Gabe Musso's Notes PS1 out
Project Handout out
Gap penalties, Alignment relation to HMMs, Progressive alignment Feb 3 Thompson et al: CLUSTALW
Loytinoja & Golding: Progressive Alignment
Chapter 4 of Durbin's book
Gap penalties: Clement Chung's Notes
9. Modern Alignment ProgramsFeb 8 Reduction from LIS to LCS (Gusfield 12.4-12.5)
Brudno & Dubchak: Comparisons of Long Genomic Sequences (Chapter 14 from Aluru's Handbook)
Rearrangements: Philipp Hertel's Notes
10. Rearrangements & Hannenhali-Pevzner AlgorithmFeb 10 Bergeron's presentation of Hannenhali-Pevzner Rearrangements: Ali Juma's Notes
Genes & Regulation
11. Biology of genes & Motifs Feb 15 Biology of Genes: Hania El Ayoubi's Notes
12. Gene finding Feb 17 Zhang's Review of Gene-Finding
Brent & Guigo's Review of Comparative Gene-Finding
Gene Finding: Hui Lan's Notes
Spring Break -- Have fun!
13. Guest Lecture -- Tim Hughes: Microarrays & Gene ExpressionMarch 1 Microarray Overview
Eisen et al: Microarray Clustering
Tim Hughes' Lecture Slides

Microarrays: Pingzhao Hu's Notes

Microarrays: Desiree Tillo's Notes

14. Gibbs Sampling for Motif finding Mar 3 Lawrence et al: Gibbs Sampling Gibbs Sampling: Hyonho Lee's Notes
15. Guest Lecture -- Martin TompaMar 8 Blanchette et al.: Footprinter Matin Tompa's Lecture Slides

Footprinter: Dustin Lang's Notes

PS 2 out Sequence for PS2
Protein Structures & Interactions
16. Protein Structue Overview Mar 10 Murzin et al: SCOP Intro to Structure: Jifang Jiang's Notes Intro to Structure: Jim Huang's Notes
17.Energy Computation for Protein FoldingMar 15
18.ChainTree Algorithm Mar 17 Lotan et al: ChainTree Algorithm
19.Protein Distance MetricsMar 22
20.Structural Motifs Mar 24 Kolodny et al: Small Libraries of Structural Motifs

Sander et al: Local Protein Structure prediction

21.Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) networks Mar 29 Bork et al: Protein Interaction Networks

Przulj et al: Modeling Interactome: Scale Free or Geometric?

PS3 out
22.PPIs - Functional Classes & ComparisonMar 31 Nabieva et al: Prediction of Protein Function

Kelley et al: PathBLAST

Final Project
23-24. Presentations Apr 5 This will be a 2 hour session beginning at 9am
Presentations Apr 7 This will be a 2 hour session beginning at 9am
25.Presentations, wrapup Apr 12 This will be a 2 hour session beginning at 9am