1. Bioinformatics Professor: Monica Bianchini Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics E–mail: monica@diism.unisi.it Phone: 0577 2348501012 Mobile: 320 4355875 Students’ assistance:  Tuesday, from 2.30 to 4.30 p.m.  By appointment, fixed beforehand by email

2. Course program Main topics Molecular biology and biochemistry Biological database searching and pairwise alignments Substitution patterns Distancebased phylogenetic methods Characterbased phylogenetic methods Genomics and gene recognition Prediction of protein and RNA structures Proteomics Machine learning tools for bioinformatics Lectures and laboratory exercises Seminars from academic and industry experts

3. Textbooks Dan E. Krane, Michael L. Raymer, Fundamental Concepts of Bioinformatics, BenjaminCummings Pub. Co., United States, 2002 Arthur M. Lesk, An Introduction to Bioinformatics, Oxford Press, 3 rd ed., 2008 Slides, freely downloadable at www.diism.unisi.it/monica/bioinfo.html

4. Examination Practical exam: Use of machine learning tools for biological data processing (based on existing software) Team work Discussion of the obtained results as a part of the oral examination Oral exam