Background

The rapid identification of pathogens infecting livestock is essential to appropriately respond to the threat. The number and the variety of pathogen sequenced genomes have been growing more dramatically these recent years, because of the new sequencing technologies. This wealth of new data is very useful to the research field through the development of bioinformatics tools and databases that deal with large amount of sequences. Among them, BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) and MSA () programs are very efficient for protein or nucleotide sequence similarity search.

The present course introduces the main biological databases, alignment tool BLAST and Multiple sequence alignments (MSA) programs, and interpretation of results.

Goal

The ultimate aim is the better management of animal diseases by preparing laboratory technicians, veterinarians and molecular epidemiologists from diagnostic and research laboratories of developing FAO and IAEA member states, to be self-sufficient in the data analysis by interpreting the phylogenetic trees and their relationships.

Target audience

Researchers, Laboratory technicians, veterinarians, epidemiologists from diagnostic and research laboratories of member states of IAEA and FAO. The concepts are explained in generalized way to help all academicians, researchers, students from all countries working in the field of molecular genetics and epidemiology.