BIO230

Repository for the BIO230 web site at https://vprobon.github.io. Schedule, assessment, teaching material etc.

View the Project on GitHub vprobon/BIO230

BIO230 - Introduction to Computational Biology - Content and Schedule (Spring 2026)

Instructor: Asscociate Prof. Vasilis J Promponas. promponas.vasileios@ucy.ac.cy

DETAILED TEACHING SCHEDULE (Check regularly for updates)

  Date Content Lecture Reading material
Week 1 Introduction      
  Tuesday, 20/01 Course Introduction This website site, MS TEAMS environment  
  Wednesday, 21/01 No class    
  Friday, 23/01 Concepts in (Molecular/Cell) Biology Lectures/01.Fundamentals (slides 1-23) Understanding Bioinformatics p. 3-44
Week 2 Introduction cont’d and Literature resources      
  Tuesday, 27/01 An Overview of Bioinformatics Lectures/01.Fundamentals (slides 24-35) Understanding Bioinformatics p. 3-44
  Wednesday, 28/01 Tutorial/Q&A session    
  Friday, 30/01 Online Literature Resources for (Molecular) Biology, Part I: Information Retrieval Basics Lectures/02.InformationRetrievalBiomed_PartI Optional: Chapter 1 from Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schütze, Introduction to Information Retrieval, Cambridge University Press. 2008.
Week 3 Literature resources (cont’d)      
  Tuesday, 03/02 Online Literature Resources for (Molecular) Biology, Part II: Selected Topics Lectures/03.InformationRetrievalBiomed_EN-PartII Online resources: PubMed; Venn diagram online server; SCOPUS; Google Scholar
  Wednesday, 04/02 Online Literature Resources for (Molecular) Biology, Part III: Pubmed Practicals/01..Practical-ILIOPOULOS-Pubmed_cyprus_2021_EN Online resource: PubMed
  Friday, 06/02 Online Literature Resources for (Molecular) Biology, Part IV: Pubmed (cont’d) See above Online resource: PubMed
Week 4 Biological Databases      
  Tuesday, 10/02 Part I: Brief Introduction on (Biological) Databases, Primary and Secondary Databases Lectures/04.BiologicalDatabases-PartI Online Resources: DOE JGI- Genomes Online Database, Nucleic Acids Research Annual database issue
  Wednesday, 11/02 Tutorial/Q&A session    
  Friday, 13/02 Part II: A brief history, Features of Biological DBs, Important Providers Lectures/05.BiologicalDatabases-PartII Online resource: NAR Database Summary Paper Category List Major Providers: NCBI, EBI, SIB, NGDC-CNCB
Week 5 Biological Databases      
  Tuesday, 17/02 Part III: Sequence Databases Lectures/06.BiologicalDatabases-PartIII Online Resources: GenBank, EMBL/ENA, DDBJ
  Wednesday, 18/02 Tutorial/Q&A session    
  Friday, 20/02 Part IV: UniProt Lectures/07.BiologicalDatabases-PartIV-UniProt Online resource: UniProt
Week 6 Biological Databases      
  Tuesday, 24/02 Hands on Practice on UniProt database Self assessment quizes: Quiz 1; Quiz 2  
  Wednesday, 25/02 Midterm Exam (Fixed) Material covered in both lectures and practical sessions/tutorials  
  Friday, 27/02 Part V: Structural Databases (PDB, SCOP, CATH, AlphaFoldDB) Lectures/08.BiologicalDatabases-V-Structure_and_DBs Understanding Bioinformatics p. 25-44.
Online resources: RCSB PDB, SCOP, CATH, AlphaFoldDB
Week 7 Biomolecular Sequence Analysis      
  Tuesday, 03/03      
  Wednesday, 04/03      
  Friday, 06/03      
Week 8 Biomolecular Sequence Analysis      
  Tuesday, 10/03      
  Wednesday, 11/03      
  Friday, 13/03      
Week 9 Biomolecular Sequence Analysis      
  Tuesday, 17/03      
  Wednesday, 18/03      
  Friday, 20/03      
Week 10 Biomolecular Structure Analysis      
  Tuesday, 24/03      
  Wednesday, 25/03 No tutorial (National Holiday)    
  Friday, 27/03      
Week 11 Biomolecular Structure Analysis      
  Tuesday, 31/03      
  Wednesday, 01/04 No tutorial (National Holiday)    
  Friday, 03/04      
Week 12 Biomolecular Structure Analysis      
  Tuesday, 21/04      
  Wednesday, 22/04      
  Friday, 24/04      
Week 13 An overview of Computational Systems Biology      
  Tuesday, 28/04      
  Wednesday, 29/04      
  Friday, 06/03      
    Final Exam (Date to be confirmed)    

Bioinformatics Research Laboratory @UCY 2005-2026.