BECA Bioinformatics Workshop Upgrade East African Students

Biosciences east and central Africa (BecA) is a biotechnology initiative working on plants, animals and microbes. The core of BecA is a joint venture of regional research partners linked to the global research community, with the aim to employ modern biotechnology to improve agriculture in eastern and central Africa.

Recently, the BecA-ILRI Bioinformatics group hosted a training workshop on proteomics and bioinformatics for 23 students from the East Africa region. It was supported by The Regional Students Group (RSG) East Africa and organized by Dr. Etienne de Villiers, the BecA-ILRI Bioinformatics Group Leader. The training was conducted by Prof Anna Tramontano from the Department of Biochemical Sciences “Rossi Fanelli”, University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy. Through lectures, demonstrations and practical learning activities, the participants learned about protein structures, evolution of protein structures and protein structure classifications. Several methods for protein structure determination, such as homology modeling, fold recognition and fragment based methods were investigated. Students were also introduced to the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) project and how structure prediction can lead to protein function prediction.

"The selection of the students was extremely effective. All of them showed a keen interest in learning, which was refreshing and stimulating, and many of them had specific problems that we could discuss. I do sincerely hope that most of them will be able to make use of what they learned and did in the course of their career,” Dr. Tramontano said.

The BecA Hub with a state of the art shared Biosciences Platform is located at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya. For more information on this workshop and for future workshops on bioinformatics at the BecA Hub, contact Dr. de Villiers at e.villiers@cgiar.org.