Vital in early stages of drug manufacturing tests College of Science at UoB Organizes a Workshop on Bioinformatics Tools

Sakhir – University of Bahrain (Khadijah Abdusalem)
22 July 2022
Around 80 students and graduates, and several faculty members attended an interactive workshop titled “Hands on Training of Bioinformatics Tools”, on Sunday (July 17, 2022), organized by the Department of Biology at the College of Science at the University of Bahrain.
Dr. Salwa Mutlaq Al-Thawadi, Head of the Department of Biology welcomed the attendees on behalf of the Dean of the College of Science, Prof. Mohammed Mustafa El-Hilo, noting that bioinformatics is a modern scientific discipline that combines information sciences, mathematics, and biology, and provides necessary tools for analyzing genomic and proteomic data to understand complex biological systems and find appropriate solutions, calling on students and graduates to take advantage of the workshop and produce scientific research in this field, as this science leads to new discoveries.
Providing practical training for students, Dr. Qamar Abbas Solangi, assistant professor at the Department of Biology, showcased the use of bioinformatics tools, and pointed out that bioinformatics develops algorithms and software tools, as well as analyzes and interprets biological data using a variety of these algorithms and software tools.
Dr. Solangi also presented several bioinformatics tools such as: binding database, ADMET properties calculator, Docking, and In-Silico PCR that searches a sequence database with a pair of PCR primers using an indexing strategy, in addition to training attendees on tools that allow the representation of proteins, their relationships with other molecules, and how to sequence their DNA.
Furthermore, he discussed the development and improvement of medical and research services using information tools that contribute to reducing costs and preserving resources. As these tools can be used in the early stages of drug manufacturing tests, specifically in the pre-clinical stages, which measure the speed of digestion in the human body, and whether these drugs have some toxic properties.
On his part, Prof. Qaisar Mahmood presented a detailed explanation on the BLAST-Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, noting that it is one of the most widely used bioinformatics programs for sequential search, as an exploratory algorithm that focuses on comparing Primary biological sequence information, such as the amino acid sequences of proteins or the nucleotides of (DNA/RNA).

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