2009: Second Bioinformatics Meeting of the Luxembourg Bioinformatics Network (LuciLinX)

The symposium took place on October 9th 2009 at the University of Luxembourg, Campus Limpertsberg, Science Building. The meeting was organised by the Systems Biology Unit of the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Luxembourg, in cooperation with all the LuciLinX member institutions.

The format of the 2009 edition was different from the previous year. The morning programme was dedicated to talks and presentations, while the afternoon featured 2 parallel sessions of practical workshops.

The symposium was again attended by around 100 participants. The workshops were highly successful, with all seats taken and some attendants even sitting on the floor.

Funding was provided the University of Luxembourg and CRP-Santé.

Content:

Workshops held on October 9th - Session 1

Intro to R / Bioconductor - Statistical tools for biologists

Part 1: Introduction to R and Bioconductor (Petr Nazarov)
Part 2: Statistical tools for biologists (Thomas Udelhoven)

Part 1: Introduction to R and Bioconductor

By: Petr Nazarov, Microarray Center, CRP-Santé

Topics:
  1. Introduction to R
    1. operations and basic constructions of the language;
    2. data types and data structures;
    3. data manipulation;
    4. data visualization;
    5. functions.
  2. Statistical analysis
    1. tests of means: t-test, Wilcoxon test
    2. regression
    3. ANOVA
  3. R in bioinformatics: Bioconductor
    1. data loading, QC/QA and visualization
    2. data analysis (basics)

Part 2: Statistical tools for biologists

By: Thomas Udelhoven, CRP-Lippmann

Topics: Advanced data analysis and applied multivariate statistics with R and SPSS:

  1. Principal Component Analysis
  2. Multiple Regression
  3. Cluster Analysis
  4. Discriminant Analysis

Imaging in biology using ImageJ

By: Patrick Pirrotte, Andreas Jahnen, CRP-Tudor

Topics:
  • Focus on microscopy images, but also gels and microarray data if that is wished.
  • Introduction to image analysis automation.

Session 2

Protein identification

By: Kjell Sergeant

Topics: After a brief introduction on the basic opportunities and problems associated with proteomics, the focus will be mainly on the application of the most frequently used software tool for database dependent protein identification. Using examples from own research as raw material, the use of this and other tools will be explored from identification of proteins isolated from fully characterized species, over the study of proteins from non-model species and the identification of simple post-translational modifications.

Basics of systems biology

By: Thomas Sauter, Uni.lu

Topics:
  • Introduction to (Bottom-Up) systems biology
  • Overview of the theoretical topics covered in the Master in Integrated Systems Biology
  • Some useful computational tools
  • Hands on - case study: Analysis of a small transcriptional network using nonlinear dynamical modeling