Up-to-date information about the seminar is on http://www.cwi.nl/biological-networks-uu-2012
Target group
This seminar is intended for master students and beginning PhD
students. It will be truly interdisciplinary, and students from
mathematics, biology, bioinformatics, and computer science as well as
other disciplines are welcome. The seminar covers aspects of graph
theory, network analysis, algorithmics, combinatorial optimization,
computational complexity, statistics, probability theory, and cell
biology, and knowledge in at least one of these fields as well as
interest in the others is a hard requirement for participation. The seminar will take place on
Tuesdays, from 15:15 - 16:45, at Utrecht University (Uithof location).
Motivation
and Topics: It has turned out that the complexity of life is rather due
to complex interactions between molecules than to the complexity of
single entities. Consequently, research in the life sciences has focused
on studying systems of interactions such as regulatory, metabolic,
signaling, and interaction networks. Mathematical and computational
techniques play a key role in understanding these networks and this
seminar focuses on some of their core contributions to network biology:
- Introduction to cell biology and biological networks, basic graph theory
- Network analysis. (Random) network models and their properties. Network motifs and modules.
- Networks in inference: Protein function, disease genes, drug targets
- Network modules. Clustering and bi-clustering.
- Network mining: Active/dysfunctional subnetworks. Classification.
- Network evolution and comparison. Alignment and queries.
- Late-breaking results (from the top conferences RECOMB and ISMB)
Format
We will discuss original work on one topic in each class, which is
presented by one or two students. Assignment of topics will take place
in January. In addition, there is the possibility to do an additional
small project on a topic of choice. Grades will be given based on the
presentation, active participaction in interdisciplinary discussions,
and a possible final project.
Lecturer: Gunnar Klau, Life Sciences Group, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
