Credits	3-7 cr
Period	I-II
Objectives
Contents	The purpose of this course is to give postgraduate level knowledge on bioinformatics or a related field. The actual contents of the course vary from year to year. The course can be lectured, or arranged in seminar form.
Prerequisites
Course replacements
Target audience	The course is intended mainly for graduate students of computer science, statistics, and applied mathematics, but students from other fields are welcome as well. In particular, mathematically oriented biology, bioinformatics, and medical students should benefit from the course.
Requirements	A presentation on a research theme plus a small literature study or project work, attendance to lectures.
Assessment
Literature	Usually some new study book or collection of articles.
Language of instruction	EN. English
Course staff	Lecturer: Jarkko Salojärvi, Course assistant: Leo Lahti.
Office hours
Additional information	Topic at autumn 2008: High-throughput sequencing and its applications. Massively parallel sequencing methods such as 454 pyrosequencing, Solexa and SOLiD form the current leading edge of biological measurement techniques. The methods facilitate a fast, cost-effective sequencing of the whole genome, which will possibly open up a whole new era of biological research. The opening lecture of the seminar will be held by Doc. Mikko Frilander from the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki. In this seminar, we first acquaint ourselves with the technology behind each of the different sequencing methods. The main focus of the seminar is to explore current biological research questions where statistical models exploiting sequence information can be applied. Each of the students selects a research theme and gives a presentation on it. Possible themes: -polymorphism in local populations -evolution of gene regulatory networks -gene family evolution -predicting gene expression patterns from regulatory sequence -computational epigenetics -microRNA profiling The presentations are based on journal papers suggested in the course web page.
CEF level