Bioinformatics: Multiple Sequence Alignment and Phylogenetics

BeginnersPrerequisitesNew

This course provides an introduction to the construction of high quality Multiple Sequence Alignments (MSAs) and the computation of phylogenetic trees from those alignments. Further information is available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

• Our courses are open to all who might benefit
• Booking priority is given to people from Cambridge University and Collaborating Institutes
• Individual Course fees are required only from External participants not from Collaborating Institutes

• Basic computing skills
• Graduate level in Life Sciences

Course objectives are primarily to enable participants to better:

• Understand the range of contexts in which alignments are used & are useful;
• Understand the importance of sequence similarities & differences, & what they tell us;
• Understand the meaning of alignments;
• Understand the use of metaphor & its role in interpreting alignments.

The overall course aim is to provide an introduction to the computation of quality Multiple Sequence Alignments (MSAs), primarily for phylogenetic analysis.

More specifically, we aim to discuss:

• What alignments are useful for - why we align sequences;
• What’s in a sequence; what’s in an alignment;
• What alignments mean - introducing metaphor;
• Visualising alignments.
• Alternative interpretations (evolutionary and structural) of sequence alignments
• Building automatic and manual multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) with JalView
• MSAs and short protein linear motifs

Presentations, demonstrations and practicals

2

A number of times per year

• Bioinformatics: Molecular Phylogenetics
• Bioinformatics: Introduction to Phylogenetic Tree-Building
• Bioinformatics: Interpreting Phylogenies