Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that combines biology, computer science and mathematics to help understand and organise the vast amount of information related to living organisms. It involves using computers to analyse biological data, such as DNA sequences, protein structures and genetic information. This helps scientists discover how genes work, how diseases develop, explain evolutionary traits and how different species are related.
Essentially, bioinformatics turns complex biological data into meaningful insights that can lead to new discoveries in medicine, biology and agriculture (among other fields).
Recently, at the University of Malta (UM), we have been granted €2.5 million in EU funding to relocate an international bioinformatics expert to Malta and set up a bioinformatics team, to help this field flourish and increase productivity in the area locally.
This project, called BioGeMT, employs five early-stage bioinformatics researchers who are led by the ERA chair, Panagiotis Alexiou. This team supports the bioinformatics needs of several biomedical research groups at the university. Another aim of this project is to provide bioinformatics training to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Bioinformatics turns complex biological data into meaningful insights that can lead to new discoveries in medicine, biology and agriculture
This is not the only bioinformatics-themed project at UM. The University of Malta coordinates TargetMI, a €4 million initiative funded by the European Innovation Council and led by principal investigator Stephanie Bezzina Wettinger.
This project seeks to measure and compare molecular levels in individuals who have experienced a heart attack with those who have not, with the ultimate goal of developing a test to assess heart attack risk, as well as to identify new candidate drugs to prevent heart attacks. The project entails extensive computational and data analysis components.
Computing infrastructure, in the form of a large number of computers networked and working in unison together in a cluster, is also being procured partly via these two EU-funded projects.
Some of these computer nodes have special cards known as Graphical Processing Units (GPU) to facilitate the creation of AI models used in bioinformatics. These models may be used for drug discovery, risk prediction for specific diseases, gene annotation and functional prediction, protein structure prediction and image analysis (and many other areas).
Jean-Paul Ebejer is an associate professor at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking and an associate member of the Department of AI at the University of Malta. His main scientific interests lie in artificial intelligence and bioinformatics. He is the course coordinator of the M.Sc. in Bioinformatics programme at UM which will next commence in October 2024.
Sound Bites
• Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, North Carolina State University engineers have discovered a way to make a single plastic cubed structure transform into more than 1,000 configurations using only three active motors. The findings could pave the way for shape-shifting artificial systems that can take on multiple functions and even carry a load – like versatile robotic structures used in space, for example.
• When people are having a conversation, they rapidly take turns speaking and sometimes even interrupt. Now, researchers who have collected the largest ever dataset of chimpanzee ‘conversations’ have found that they communicate back and forth using gestures following the same rapid-fire pattern.
For more soundbites, listen to Radio Mocha every Saturday at 7.30pm on Radju Malta and the following Monday at 9pm on Radju Malta 2 https://www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/.
DID YOU KNOW?
• The first modern antidepressants were made in 1952 using leftover hydrazine, a chemical the Nazis had been using as rocket fuel.
• The name of the company Mattel reflects the names of two of its founders: Matt Matson and Elliot Handler. It does not include the name of the third founder, Ruth Handler, the inventor of the Barbie doll.
• ‘Bristol L’ is a unique feature of Bristol dialect whereby a word like ‘cinema’ is pronounced as ‘cinemal’. The name of the city itself is an example of the feature: its older form was ‘Bristow’.
• When running at top speed, hippos are completely airborne for 15 per cent of the time.
For more trivia, see: www.um.edu.mt/think.