BIO 3

Background on Bioinformatics

a. Combination of different sciences like mathematics, computer science, informatics, statistics, chemistry.

b. Application of biological tools on molecular data.

c. Gives improvements on storing, retrieving, organizing, and analyzing biological data.

Importance of Bioinformatics

a. Plays important role in gene analysis and protein expression.

b.  Allows scientists to make accurate deductions on the pattern of descent.

c. Gives scientists and researchers a proper venue to store data which enables them to have the same data to work on, limiting inaccuracies and discrepancies.

Objectives

What are our objectives?

a. The objective of this video is to discuss how bioinformatics works

b. To discuss the similarities of PD gene and PD protein

c. It is important to create a phylogenetic tree to identify which organism will be closely related to the reference sequence (human).

d. To identify what organism can be used as a substitute for studying PD in humans

Phylogeny being addressed

To find a certain organism that could be used in order to conduct tests to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease

PARKINSON’S DISEASE

What is it?

a. It is one of the most common diseases that affects the nervous system

b. This disease targets the dopamine-producing cells found in the brain

Symptoms:

·         Tremor

·         Stiffness

·         Slowness

·         Impaired balance

·         Dementia

c. Specific genes associated with Alzheimer’s:

·         SNCA – makes protein alpha-synuclein

·         PARK2 – makes protein parkin

·         PARK7 – makes protein DJ-1

·         PINK1 – makes protein with no known function

Based on the phylogenetic tree, it can be said that Pan troglodytes, or chimpanzee, is closely related to the reference sequence, Homo sapiens. Between the chimpanzee and human, the bootstrap value that was obtained from the analysis is 98% . The result that shows the close relationship between the two is reliable since the value is greater than 75% and is also near 100%.

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Kapetanovic, I. M., Rosenfeld, S., & Izmirlian, G. (2004). Overview of Commonly Used Bioinformatics Methods and Their Applications. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1020(1), 10-21. doi:10.1196/annals.1310.003

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ScienceDaily. (n.d.). Bioinformatics. Retrieved November 25, 2017, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/bioinformatics.htm