Computational analysis of protein-protein interactions for bench biologists: EMBO Practical Course

General info

Date: 02 Sep 2012 - 08 Sep 2012
Location: MDC Berlin
Website: http://events.embo.org/12-comp-ppi/index.html
Keywords: Protein-Protein Interactions, Bioinformatics, Systems Biology, Protein Structure, Protein Sequence Analysis, Databases
Organiser: EMBO
Contact(s): Aidan Budd

Description

As a result of attending the course, trainees should be better able to:

Identify previously-reported data on PPIs from databases
Use bioinformatics tools to predict protein modules from protein sequences
Visualise and analyse data on the 3D structure of PPIs, and of PPI networks
Describe ways in which PPIs have been targeted, using bioinformatics approaches, in drug design
Describe the characteristics of PPIs mediated between different kinds of protein modules

Tools used and practical exercises taught will focus on the following use-cases:

retrieving previously-reported PPI data associated with protein(s) of interest (and other kinds of data), using resources such as UniProt, IntAct, MINT, ePDB/PDB, PhosphoELM, REFLECT, and others
predicting protein interaction modules from protein sequence, using resources such as PFAM, SMART, InterPro, ELM, IUPRED, ScanSite, and others
identifying modules in PPI networks, and predicting their function, using resources such as STRING, STITCH, and Cytoscape
identifying residues likely to be involved in direct physical contact between proteins in PPIs, using resources such as CLUSTALX, JalView, PyMOL, and PISA

Additionally, practicals will focus on developing the participants understanding of several key concepts including: interpretation of sequence alignments; concepts associated with protein 3D structure; the structural diversity of PPIs; and structures of biological databases.

In several cases, developers of the packages used during the course are trainers in the course (Toby Gibson, ELM, CLUSTALX; Zsuzsanna Dosztanyi, IUPRED; Michael Yaffe; ScanSite; Francesca Diella: PhosphoELM, ELM; Lars Juhl Jensen: STRING, STITCH, REFLECT; Gary Bader and Piet Molenaar, Cytoscape).
Other teachers are: Miguel Andrade, Aidan Budd, Claudia Chica, Ricardo Rodriguez de la Vega, Holger Dinkel, Nadezhda T. Doncheva, Niall Haslam, Bora Khaldi, Xavier Morelli and Denis Shields.