6th EMBO Practical Course on Biomolecular Simulation May 17 to 24, 2012 at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France
Molecular simulation techniques have never been as accessible and as valuable to biologists as to-day. The EMBO practical course addresses three types of simulation: quantum mechanics, molecular mechanics/dynamics and Brownian dynamics. These permit simulation on different temporal and spatial scales. In addition, it provides an introduction to macromolecular electrostatics, protein-ligand docking, structure-based drug design, as well as programming techniques.
Course organizers: Michael Nilges (Pasteur Institute, Paris) Rebecca Wade (HITS, Heidelberg)
EMBO Practical Course on Computational Molecular Evolution
The need for effective and informed analysis of biological sequence data is increasing with the explosive growth of biological sequence databases. A molecular evolutionary framework is central to many Bioinformatics approaches used in these analyses, e.g., de novo gene finding from genomic sequences. Additionally, explicit use of molecular evolutionary and phylogenetic analyses also provide important insights in their own right, e.g., analysis of adaptive evolution in viruses providing clues of their interaction with host immune systems. To this end, we aim to provide postgraduate (and more advanced) researchers with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to carry out molecular evolutionary analyses on sequence data. The course will be aimed at students with a wide range of different levels of experience. The course will offer a unique opportunity for direct interaction with some of the world-leading scientists and authors of famous analysis tools (John Huelsebeck, Olivier Gascuel, Nick Goldman, Ziheng Yang, Rasmus Nielsen, etc.) in evolutionary Bioinformatics. The course will entail data retrieval and assembly, alignment techniques, phylogeny reconstruction, hypothesis testing, and population genetic approaches.
COMBINE is a workshop-style event with oral presentation, posters and breakout sessions. The five meeting days will include talks about the COMBINE standards and associated or related standardization efforts, as well as presentations of tools using these standards. Oral presentations will be selected from the submitted abstracts. In addition to oral presentations, poster sessions will allow people to inform each other about their software and other projects in a setting that allow interaction and in-depth discussion. The second COMBINE meeting is hosted by HITS and will take place in Studio Villa Bosch in Heidelberg.
