66446 - Biomolecular Techniques Applied to Transmissible Diseases

Course contents

The aim of the course is to give a knowledge on epidemiology and control of infectious diseases of animals to give the means to understand and use epidemiological tools in veterinary medicine. In particular, the objective is to provide information on quantitative methods, diagnostic tests, evaluation of risk factors, surveillance systems and development of epidemiological studies.

The specific program inculdes:

1. Introduction to epidemiology: historical information, definition, basis.

2. The aim and scope of epidemiology.

3. Causality: associations, causal inference and casuality; statistical significance.

4. Ecology of diseases: factors related to the presence, maintenance and transmission of infectious diseases in animal population; difference between infection and disease; factors related to etiological agent, host and environment.

5. Diagnostic tests: the way to choose and evaluate diagnostic tests; specificity, sensibility, predictive value and detection limit.

6. Measures and frequency.

7. Disease trends in relation to the time: endemic, epidemic and sporadic trends.

8. Sampling: samples and population; sample size; methods.

9. Surveillance: definition, goals and mechanisms.

10. Different types of epidemiological surveys.

11. Risk assessment.

12. Molecular epidemiology.

Within the course a laboratory of molecular epidemiology is included to provide the knowledges of softwares and alghoritms to analyse nucleotide and aminoacid sequences and to carried out phylogentic analysis on gene sequences, to study the evolution of virus and bacteria. The program includes: Definitions of bioinformatic, computational biology and biomedicine. Basic concepts of molecular evolution. Analysis of nucleotide and aminoacid sequences. Pairwise alignment (global and local), multiple alignment of gene sequences, alghoritms of alignment and standard format (BLAST, FASTA, CLUSTAL). Assembling of gene sequences and sequence alignments using softwares CHROMAS, BIOEDIT, CLUSTALX. Nucleotide and protein data base. Phylogentic analysis: construction and analysis of phylogenetic trees. Methods based on genetic distance: models of molecular evolution. Methods based on discrete characters. Construction and interpretation of phylogenetic trees using the softwares MEGA, PHYLIP.

Finally, the basic concepts of gene delivery for therapeutic use and vaccine production will be discussed, with particular reference to the objectives, methods and steps of gene delivery. For the most important viral vectors used in gene delivery: Adeno-associated Virus Retrovirus Adenovirus, Poxvirus and Herpesvirus, life cycle and genomic structure will be re-called and the methods of production and applications in therapy will be illustrated.

Readings/Bibliography

• Michael Thrusfield [http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Michael%20Thrusfield] Veterinary Epidemiology, 3rd Ed.

• Bottarelli E., Ostanello F. Epidemiologia: teoria ed esempi di medicina veterinaria. Edagricole, Milano, 2011 ISBN-978-88-506-5347-8

RECOMMENDED READING

• The Phylogeny Handbook. A Practical Approach to phylogenetic analysis and hypothesis testing.

• Philippe Lemey, Marco Salemi e Anne-Mieke Vandamme. Cambridge University Press, Second edition

• Berry G. Hall: Phylogenetic Trees made easy: A how-to Manual. Sinauer 2007

• The softwares are available to Felsenstein's web page:

• http://evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip/software.html

Teaching methods

lectures and practicals

Assessment methods

Student assessment will be based on an oral test and a practical examination in the bioinformatic laboratory. The test will be designed to verify that students have attained the necessary knowledge and skills to put into practice what they have learned during the course. The communication abilities will be particularly evaluated. The total score will derived from the average of each single score, calculated considering the CFU of each single course.

The test is passed if the student will get a minimum score of 18/30.

Teaching tools

power point slides and web resources

Office hours

See the website of Silvia Piva

See the website of Caterina Lupini

See the website of Andrea Balboni