Postgraduate Course: Biological Structure and Drug Function (PGBI11130)
Course Outline
| School | School of Biological Sciences |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | In molecular modelling and drug discovery models are built from known structures. Students need to have an appreciation of how those known models are derived and what quality metrics are associated with them. In this course this then feeds into the use of models in drug discovery and the validity and reliability of these models. |
| Course description |
Students will be given overviews of major proteins structure determination methods, with emphasis on the differing physical requirements from each one, the differing types of information that each technique gives and quality metrics associated with the different techniques. This is to allow the students to differentiate the different inputs to molecular models and what information they bring. This then leads into a discussion of general aspects of model based drug discovery and several examples of this will be presented. During this time they will be performing practical work developing their own report based around drug discovery of a for a pathogen protein described by sequence. They will need to decide if this sequence and its mammal analogue have suitable structures available, what sort of quality those structures are, if model structures need to be built or acquired (eg from databases of modeled structures). They will perform a simply virtual screening on these models and describe the output in terms of quality of hits and reliability given quality of inputs.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
Quota: 30 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 12,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 8,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 12,
Summative Assessment Hours 2,
Revision Session Hours 4,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
158 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Class test on structural methods (30%)
Report based on mini project (70%) |
| Feedback |
Written feedback for ICA, marked class test scripts available for discussion (1 tutorial period). |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand the basics of protein structure determination methods.
- Understand quality metrics associated with different methods. Have an appreciation of how structural data feeds into modelling techniques.
- Appreciate how structures can be used in the development of new chemical entities for drug development.
- Learn how to accurately report virtual screening experiment.
- Learn how to accurately report virtual screening experiment.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Knowledge and Understanding: How protein structures are determined, how those determinations are represented, what quality metrics are applicable to different methods of structure determination, and how the determination and its quality can be used in drug discovery.
Personal and Intellectual Autonomy: Students will be required to read literature presented in the course and integrate that information with taught material. This will allow them to form their own opinions and ideas on structures and their quality metrics and present them with appropriate literature underpinning.
Technical and Practical Skills: Students will learn to use structural databases and recognise the quality metrics presented with entries. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Matthew Nowicki
Tel:
Email: matthew.nowicki@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Fionnuala Nidhonnabhain
Tel:
Email: fnidhonn@ed.ac.uk |
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