Basic Biotechnology and Bioinformatics

Main principles of molecular biology. Biotechnology science and history. Objectives, methods and objects of biotechnology. Practical use of biotechnology. Fermentations and control of metabolic processes. Thermal and transport processes in biotechnology. Purification of products. Tools of bionano-technology. Applications of nanotechnology in biology, biotechnology and medicine. Social, ethical and safety concerns. Health and environmental impacts. Future of nanotechnology. Course is intended to provide students with an introductory survey of bioinformatics biology, emphasizing basic principles, practical use and future perspectives. It provides theoretical and practical knowledge on work with literature databases, molecular sequences and structures databases, and use of sequence and structure alignment.

This course is designed to acquaint science students with the basic ideas and principles of biotechnology and bioinformatics, explaining the achievements and history of biotechnology science; the tasks, objects and methods of biotechnology and practical application are analyzed.

General Biology, Biochemistry, General Genetics, Biophysics, Fundamentals of Microbiology and Immunology

1. Biotechnology science. 2. Ancient, classical and modern biotechnology. 3. Biotechnology subfields and research. 4. Tools and products of biotechnology. 5. Biotechnology industry and management. 6. Risk assessment and ethics in biotechnology. 7. Introduction to bionanotechnology. 8. Bioinformatics science and history. 9. Databases in bioinformatics and literature databases. 10. Nucleotide databases. 11. Protein databases. 12. Macromolecular 3D structure databases. 13. Pairwise sequence alignment. 14. Sequence comparison tools. 15. Multiple sequence alignment. Practical work (contents): Casein use in food biotechnology; macromolecule detection in biological objects; evaluation of antioxidant effectiveness in animal and plant cells. Search in scientific literature databases; nucleotide sequence data bases; protein sequence databases; macromolecular structure databases; sequence alignment with different strategies; practical use of multiple sequence alignment.

Gain knowledge of: basic ideas of biotechnology and bioinformatics and their development; methods and principles of biotechnological research; biotechnological problems and dangers are solved and possible solutions are solved; the use of biotechnology and bioinformatics in research and the relationship with other life sciences. Gain knowledge of the use of bioinformatics at the molecular, organismal and phylogenetic levels; principles of using databases of biological sequences and structures, and constructions of comparisons of biological sequences and structures. Understand: the importance of biotechnology and bioinformatics in the context of modern biology, other modern sciences, and the development of society; the application of biotechnology and bioinformatics in industry and research; application of bioinformatics in the search for scientific publications, writing articles. Understand the essence and application of databases of biological sequences and structures. Understand the basics and application of comparing biological sequences and structures. Ability: to practically produce simpler biotechnological products by biotechnological means, to determine the macromolecular composition, to analyze the effectiveness of antioxidants in animal and plant systems. Will be able to practically search for scientific literature in different literary databases, effectively finding access to full-text articles; to search for DNA, RNA and protein molecular sequences and structures in different databases, and to find information about their function and other specific information; to compare the sequences of biological macromolecules with different bioinformatics tools and to perform a correct interpretation of the comparison. Will be able to apply biotechnological and bioinformatics knowledge in studies and research work of other program subjects.