Studying at the University of Verona
Here you can find information on the organisational aspects of the Programme, lecture timetables, learning activities and useful contact details for your time at the University, from enrolment to graduation.
Quantitative methods for biotechnology (2023/2024)
Teaching code
4S008282
Teacher
Coordinator
Credits
6
Language
Italian
Scientific Disciplinary Sector (SSD)
ING-IND/34 - INDUSTRIAL BIOENGINEERING
Period
Semester 1 dal Oct 2, 2023 al Jan 26, 2024.
Courses Single
Authorized with reserve
Learning objectives
The aim of this course is to provide students with conceptual and methodological tools to investigate biological systems on a quantitative basis. The students will learn how to analyze and understand the biological laws governing systems' behavior and they will acquire professional skills within a multidisciplinary framework of biotechnology and related applied fields. The students will be encouraged to critically revise the biological notions gathered during their Bachelor-level studies. This revision will focus on quantitative and temporal aspects, allowing the students to make progress towards a dynamical description of biotechnological processes. Modern modeling approaches will be critically discussed and compared to highlight both their positive and limiting aspects. At the end of the course, the students will be able to professionally operate in the fields of biotechnology and interact with experts from different disciplines (or in other sectors) on the basis of a common quantitative language.
Prerequisites and basic notions
Knowledge acquired during the three-year basic courses of biotechnology or biology.
Program
Lectures:
- Introduction to RStudio and R: presentation, installation and basic commands
- Discrete and continuous probability distributions
- Univariate statistics: main tests used for the analysis of biotechnology experiments
- Two-ways ANOVA and its application two study the synergism between two treatments
- Correlation and linear regression in one dimension and multiple dimensions
- Principles of linear algebra
- The Mahalanobis distance
- Principal Component Analysis
- Survival analysis: Kaplan-Meier method and the Cox proportional hazard modellistici
- Error propagation theory
- Principles of non-linear regression
- Principles of differential equations and their numerical solution
- Growth models for population biology
- Growth models for cells in a closed (standard culture) or in an open (bioreactor) environment
- Models for cell physiology
- Oscillations in biology
Bibliography
Didactic methods
Each class introduces basic concepts of quantitative biotechnology through combination of lectures and exercises. Exercises will be solved using RStudio, a free and open-source integrated development environment for R, a programming language for statistical computing and graphics. For each argument, a number of problems derived from the scientific literature and from the research activity of the teacher will be proposed and solved. The first part of the course will revise the basic facts about probability theory and univariate statistics and then concepts of multivariate statistics and modeling of biotechnology processes will be introduced.
The course is organised in frontal lessons. Video recordings of all lessons are available on the Moodle platform.
Learning assessment procedures
The skills acquired by the students will be evaluated by means of an oral exam where the students will be asked to present their solution to a biotechnology problem - with the aid of the software R - provided by the teacher at the end of the course.
Evaluation criteria
The completeness and preciseness of the student's approach as well as his/her ability to present the solution will be evaluated.
Criteria for the composition of the final grade
Irrelevant for this course
Exam language
Italiano
