Why this course?

• To provide hands-on skills in analyzing genes of interest and their associated protein structure, diseases, and metabolic pathways 
• To gain insights on various bioinformatics databases and tools important for undergraduate/masters/PhD studies and research works. 
• To learn basic practical skills in bioinformatics that are important for research works on biosciences and related areas. 

Who should enroll in this course?

• Undergraduate/masters/PhD students, Faculty members and researchers of life sciences interested in gaining bioinformatics skills 
• Computer scientists interested in developing biology-track bioinformatics skills. 

What can you expect from the course?

The course mainly focuses on key topics that would help to build a foundation on bioinformatics for research works on biomedical fields or to explore further taking bioinformatics as a career. This course covers basic bioinformatics and other topics important for laboratory research work. 

In addition, the course is designed so that each trainee is encouraged to take their own route of learning during the workshops or/and on their own. 

Course duration

20 hours of hands-on (online Zoom session), and over 30 hours of self-practice.

The course is spread over 5 weeks, 4 hours a week, plus two hours of additional sessions within six weeks.

Starting from Jan 25, 2025. Each Saturday (7:00 AM – NT) and Sunday (7:30 PM – NT)

A full schedule will be provided before the session begins. 

Training/program approach 

• over 90% practical/hands-on workshops. Basic biology is covered during the workshops itself. 
• Each trainee is given an accession number of a set of genes. Alternatively, they can choose  genes of their interest. 
• Each trainee will work on their own gene/protein to provide the trainee an opportunity to independently research their own gene/protein/sequences given. 
• The trainees will be able to produce a short report, thesis, or a bioinformatics -based manuscript if interested.  
• This training will lay the foundation for future intermediate and advanced level training offerings in bioinformatics or related fields; some of them will be offered from NIRI in the future or a foundation to pursue higher studies in bioinformatics. 

Course fee

Nepal: NPR 8,000.00

USA: USD 100

Australia: AUD 200

Canada: CAD 100

Course Instructors

Rajendra Pangeni, PhD (Cancer Biology/Genomics)

Tara Sigdel, PhD (Biomarkers discovery)

Saroj Sah, PhD (Molecular Biology)

Jeebana Bhandari, MS (Applied Biological Sciences)

Milan Bimali, PhD (Biostatistics)

Yaman Thapa, MS (Computational Biology)

Course Syllabus

Week 1 Course Introduction and orientation

-Program/Course orientation-2 hour

Group introduction and course overview

Allocation of individual plans (accession numbers/genes of interests to work on)

-Basics of Genomics, Transcriptomics, Proteomics, and Metabolomics and their relevance in bioinformatics-2 hour

Week 2 Bioinformatics databases and tools

-Databases and tools to analyze a gene/protein of interest-2 hour

  Gene/protein structure, Open reading frame (ORF), sequence formats/FASTA etc-

 –Pairwise and multiple sequence Analyses-2 hour

Week 3: Bioinformatics tools in laboratory-based research works

-Sequence similarity searching (eg. BLAST) -2 hour

-Detecting/determining mutation/expression of a gene of interest -2 hour

Primer design to detect the expression at mRNA level (qRT)

Week 4: Biostatistics and Bioinformatics tools

-Exploring available disease databases (mutation, expression and DNA methylation etc.) 2hour

-Applying clustering techniques to identify upregulated and downregulated genes-2hour

Week 5: Gene set enrichment analyses, Pathways, Biostatistics and specialized future offerings

-Introduction to the Biostatistics-1 hour

Statistics applied in data analyses, and why we determine statistical significance in experiments and databases.

-Gene enrichment analysis, pathway analysis-1.5 hour

-Individual/group presentations and Further learnings-1.5 hour

Application Deadline: Jan 15, 2024