NIH Library is offering several bioinformatics courses that describe the effective usage and practical applications of available bioinformatics resources. 
The courses are two hours in length and include both lecture/demo and hands on session. 

Please refer to the Bioinformatics web page for training schedule and other bioinformatics resources offered by the NIH Library.

In this class, students will find a gene within a eukaryotic DNA sequence. They will then learn how to predict the function of the implied protein product by seeking sequence similarities to proteins of documented function using BLAST and other tools. Finally, students will find a 3D modeling template for this protein sequence using a Conserved Domain Database Search. During the first hour, the instructor will walk students through an analysis of an uncharacterized genomic sequence from a GenBank record. During the second hour of the class, students will perform the same analysis on another genomic sequence.

Notebook 1      Notebook 2
 

Course No. 2 "Gene Resources: From Transcription Factor Binding Sites to Function"

This course describes how to obtain information about a human gene at all levels of the central dogma of life, genome, transcript and protein, and transcription factors regulating its expression. It also covers information about single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the gene and which ones are known to be associated with disease.  For more information....

During the first hour, an instructor will walk you through an analysis of a human gene found in Problem 1. During the second hour of the class, you will perform the similar analysis on another human gene as described in Problem 2.

Problem 1      Problem 2

Exercises

This course covers how to visualize and annotate 3D protein structures using NCBI's Cn3D program, identify conserved domain(s) and ligand binding sites in a protein, search for other proteins containing similar domain(s), explore a 3D modeling template for the query protein and find distant sequence homologs that may not be identified by BLAST.

Problem 1      Problem 2

In this course, we will use the genome browsers from NCBI, UCSC and Ensembl. Used to view the assembly of the complete human genome, these browsers are valuable tools to identify and localize genes, and obtain information about them. In this course, we will see how to view different human genome maps/tracks and make best use of them. For example, the EST map can be used to identify undocumented exons or generate the alternative splice products of genes.

Problem 1      Problem 2

This course deals with identification of a disease gene using NCBI's human genome assembly. The reference genome assembly, along with integrated maps, literature, and expression information comprises a powerful discovery system for exploring candidate human disease genes.

We will start with expressed sequences obtained from a patient, identify the gene(s) expressing them, download their sequences and identify known SNPs in the expressed sequences, if any, that may contribute to the disease phenotype.

Problem 1      Problem 2

This course focuses on the correlation of a disease gene to the phenotype. It demonstrates how bioinformatics resources such as literature, expression and structure information can help provide potential functional information for disease genes.

This course describes how to determine what is known about a disease, the gene(s) associated with it and its genetic testing. We will then elucidate the biochemical and structural basis for the phenotype caused by the mutant protein.

Problem 1      Problem 2

This course describes how to access the microbial genome sequences and annotations, explains how to navigate and download the gene and protein datasets, and introduces the available genomic and comparative genomic analysis tools from NCBI, IMG and EcoCyc.

During the first hour, an overview will be given using E. coli as an example as described in Problem1. During the second hour of class, you will perform a similar analysis on another organism.

Problem 1      Problem 2

This courses describes the analysis of microarray data for gene expression.  It shows how to set up the necessary information to describe the experiment; how to analyze the data; and how to interpret the results of the analysis.

Problem 1      Problem 2 (Under Construction)

Dr. Medha Bhagwat has diverse expertise in biochemistry (PhD from University of Maryland), molecular and structural biology (postdoctoral training at NIDDK) and almost 11 years of bioinformatics experience at the National Center for Biotechnology Institute (NCBI).  While at NCBI, Medha developed and taught several 2-hour mini-courses (NCBI minicourses). These popular courses were taught more than 400 times to around 12,000 participants.   The courses listed above are based on some of these mini-courses.