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Instruct-ERIC Events

EMBL-EBI Virtual Course: Structural bioinformatics

Training
Registration Date: 20-Jul-2026 to 21-Jul-2026
Date: 19-Oct-2026 to 25-Oct-2026

Structural biology, determining the three-dimensional shapes of biomacromolecules and their complexes, can tell us a lot about how these molecules function and the roles they play within a cell. Data derived from structure determination experiments and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted structure prediction enables life-science researchers to address a wide variety of questions.  

This course provides a guide to the commonly used methods and tools in structural bioinformatics to analyse and interpret experimentally determined and AI-predicted macromolecular structure data.

This course explores bioinformatics data resources and tools for the investigation, analysis, and interpretation of both experimentally determined and predicted biomacromolecular structures. It will focus on how best to analyse and interpret available structural data to gain useful information given specific research contexts. The course content will also cover predicting function and exploring interactions with other macromolecules.

Virtual course

You will learn via a mix of pre-recorded lectures, live presentations, and trainer Q&A sessions. Practical experience will be developed through group activities and trainer-led computational exercises. Live sessions will be delivered using Zoom with additional support and asynchronous communication via Slack.

Pre-recorded material may be provided before the course starts that you will need to watch, read, or work through to gain the most out of the actual training event. A brief pre-course session will be held the week beforehand. Computational practicals will run on EMBL-EBI's virtual training infrastructure, meaning you will not require access to a powerful computer or install complex software on your own machines.

You will need to be available between the hours of 09:00 – 18:30 BST each day of the course. Trainers will be available to assist, answer questions, and provide further explanations during these times.

Who is this course for?

This course is aimed at you if you are a scientist generating structural data or a scientist utilising structural data in your analysis and/or interpretation. No previous experience in the field of structural bioinformatics is required, however good knowledge of protein structure and function would be of benefit.

 

 

What will I learn?

Learning outcomes

After the course, you should be able to:

  • Access and browse a range of structural data repositories
  • Determine whether appropriate structural information exists about a given small molecule, macromolecule or complex, applying available structure-quality information
  • Build a structural model for a protein which has a structurally characterised relative and evaluate its quality
  • Predict the function of a protein, based on sequence and structure data, and navigate and assess AI-predicted protein structures
  • Explore protein-complex modelling approaches

Course content

During this course, you will learn about: 

AI-predicted protein structures: AlphaFoldDB and AlphaFill

 

Trainers

Alessia David
Imperial College London
 
Alexandre Bonvin
Utrecht University
 
 
Christine Orengo
UCL
 
 
Michael Sternberg
Imperial College London
 
Pedro Raposo
EMBL-EBI
 
Raphaelle Versini
University of Utrecht
 
 
 
Sarah Harris
University of Sheffield

Virtual