Genomics and Proteomics

Full course description

With introduction of genomics in the early 90’s of the last century, it has added an extra dimension to the understanding of the molecular nature of life, allowing the detection of many different endogenuous compound classes. Prerequisites were the unraveling of the genome, the proteome and metabolome of humans and other organisms, with special attention to the development of biomedical and analytical methods for the simultaneous analysis of the expression levels of as much as possible genes, proteins and endogenuous metabolites. This course will give students insight in the analytical principles behind omics-technologies such as array-based analysis (PCR, DNA sequencing), 2D and capillary electrophoresis, mass spectrometry and advanced statistical and data informatics. It will discuss the information that can or cannot be obtained by the different ‘omics’-approaches, and in the novel developments of omics-applications such as miRNA arrays, analysis of the epigenome, and next generation sequencing. Specific themes of the course are trancriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics with special attention for the surplus value of combining data from various omics-approaches as the best way to understand life (Systems Biology). Special areas of attention are Nutrigenomics and Toxicogenomics within the context opf drug discovery.