Together with Aidan Budd and Toby Gibson at the EMBL Heidelberg I will be organising an EMBO Practical Course on Protein Bioinformatics Tools at the Advanced Training Centre in Heidelberg in September. The course will teach wet-lab biologists the latest tools to identify functional modules in their protein of interest and introduce them to concepts like protein disorder, modular architecture and linear motifs.

• How can I come up with new ideas for the function of my proteins of interest?
• What is already known about the function of these proteins?

This course presents bioinformatics tools and concepts that can help address these two questions that are crucial for the work of many experimental/wet-lab biologists. Wet-lab researchers, with limited experience using such tools, yet who often need to answer these questions in their research, are the main target group of the course.

In particular, the course will cover analyses of protein sequences, 3D structures, interactions, and networks. Additionally, we will focus on proteins as modular entities, with both intrinsically ordered and disordered modules responsible for specific aspects of protein function.

Trainers include developers of several key tools for analysis of this kind, including Pfam, IUPRED, STRING, Scan Site, ELM, and PhosphoELM. Some of the other tools and resources presented will include Jal View, BLAST, REFLECT, SMART, ?UniProt, PyMOL, PDB, and STITCH. Most tools used during the course are web-based and can be used, free of charge, by academic scientists worldwide.

To apply for the course, fill in the online application form linked to from this site http://www.embl.de/training/events/2011/AIN11-01/registration/index.html

More information is available at http://bioinfo-casl.ucd.ie/empa