he aim of this study is to use several homology models of different completeness and accuracy and to evaluate them as search models for Molecular Replacement (MR).Three structural groups are evaluated: α-, β- and α/β- group. From every group one template structure and a couple of search models are selected. The search models are manipulated and evaluated. B-factor manipulation, side chain removal and homology modelling are the ways the search models are manipulated. This work shows that B-factor manipulation do not improve the search models. The work also shows that removing the side chains is not improving the search models. Finally the work shows that homology modelling did not model better search models.

Data mining approaches have been increasingly used in recent years in order to find patterns and regularities in large databases. In this study, the C4.5 decision tree approach was used for mining of Gene Logic database, containing biological data. The decision tree approach was used in order to identify the most relevant genes and risk factors involved in breast cancer, in order to separate healthy patients from breast cancer patients in the data sets used. Four different tests were performed for this purpose. Cross validation was performed, for each of the four tests, in order to evaluate the capacity of the decision tree approaches in correctly classifying ‘new’ samples. In the first test, the expression of 108 breast related genes, shown in appendix A, for 75 patients were used as input to the C4.5 algorithm. This test resulted in a decision tree containing only four genes considered to be the most relevant in order to correctly classify patients. Cross validation indicates an average accuracy of 89% in classifying ‘new’ samples. In the second test, risk factor data was used as input. The cross validation result shows an average accuracy of 87% in classifying ‘new’ samples. In the third test, both gene expression data and risk factor data were put together as one input. The cross validation procedure for this approach again indicates an average accuracy of 87% in classifying ‘new’ samples. In the final test, the C4.5 algorithm was used in order to indicate possible signalling pathways involving the four genes identified by the decision tree based on only gene expression data. In some of cases, the C4.5 algorithm found trees suggesting pathways which are supported by the breast cancer literature. Since not all pathways involving the four putative breast cancer genes are known yet, the other suggested pathways should be further analyzed in order to increase their credibility. In summary, this study demonstrates the application of decision tree approaches for the identification of genes and risk factors relevant for the classification of breast cancer patients

In this project relational and Lotus Notes database technology are evaluated with regard to their suitability in providing computer-based support in plant breeding in general and specifically in the production of doubled haploids. The two developed databases are compared based on a set of requirements produced together with the DH-group which is the main users of the databases. The results indicate that both Lotus Notes and the relational databases are able to fulfil all needs documented in this project, although both systems have their limitations. An often expressed opinion is that it is difficult to combine biology and databases. The experience gained in this project however suggests that it does not need to be the case in instances where data is not as complicated as often discussed. Observations made during this project indicate that data warehousing with integrated data mining and OLAP tools are surprisingly similar to how the DH-group at Svalöf Weibull works and could be a suitable solution for the production of doubled haploids.

This project is an investigation of whether analysing subsets of time series gene expression data can give additional information about putatively co-regulated genes, compared to only using the whole time series. The original gene expression data set was partitioned into subsets and similarity was computed for both the whole timed series and subsets. Pearson correlation was used as similarity measure between gene expression profiles. The results indicate that analysing co-expression in subsets of gene expression data derives true-positive connections, with respect to co-regulation, that are not detected by only using the whole time series data. Unfortunately, with the actual data set, chosen similarity measure and partitioning of the data, randomly generated connections have the same amount of true-positives as the ones derived by the applied analysis. However, it is worth to continue further analysis of the subsets of gene expression data, which is based on the multi-factorial nature of gene regulation. E.g. other similarity measures, data sets and ways of partitioning the data set should be tried.

In this project a web-based system called 3DPOPS have been designed, developed and implemented. The system creates initial 3D structures of oligosaccharides according to user input data and is intended to be integrated with an automatized 3D prediction system for saccharides. The web interface uses a novel approach with a dynamically updated graphical representation of the input carbohydrate. The interface is embedded in a web page as a Java applet. Both expert and novice users needs are met by informative messages, a familiar concept and a dynamically updated graphical user interface in which only valid input can be created. A set of test sequences was collected from the CarbBank database. An initial structure to each sequence could be created. All contained the information necessary to serve as starting points in a conformation search carried out by a 3D prediction system for carbohydrates.

The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic risk factors such as diabetes type II, dyslipidemia, hypertension, obesity, microalbuminurea and insulin resistance, which in the recent years has increased greatly in many parts of the world. In this thesis decision trees were applied to the BioExpress database, including both clinical data about donors and gene expression data, to investigate nuclear receptors ability to serve as markers for the metabolic syndrome. Decision trees were created and the classification performance for each individual risk factor were then analysed. The rules generated from the risk factor trees were compared in order to search for similarities and dissimilarities. The comparisons of rules were performed in pairs of risk factors, in groups of three and on all risk factors and they resulted in the discovery of a set of genes where the most interesting were the Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor - Alpha, the Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor - Gamma and the Glucocorticoid Receptor. These genes existed in pathways associated with the metabolic syndrome and in the recent scientific literature.

In this thesis the effect of normalization methods on the identification of differentially expressed genes is investigated. A zebrafish microarray dataset called Swirl was used in this thesis work. First the Swirl dataset was extracted and visualized to view if the robust spline and print tip loess normalization methods are appropriate to normalize this dataset. The dataset was then normalized with the two normalization methods and the differentially expressed genes were identified with the LimmaGUI program. The results were then evaluated by investigating which genes overlap after applying different normalization methods and which ones are identified uniquely after applying the different methods. The results showed that after the normalization methods were applied the differentially expressed genes that were identified by the LimmaGUI program did differ to some extent but the difference was not considered to be major. Thus the main conclusion is that the choice of normalization method does not have a major effect on the resulting list of differentially expressed genes.

The heart is a complex three-dimensional structure with mechanical properties that are inhomogeneous, non-linear, time-variant and anisotropic. These properties affect major physiological factors within the heart, such as the pumping performance of the ventricles, the oxygen demand in the tissue and the distribution of coronary blood flow. During the cardiac cycle the heart muscle tissue is deformed as a consequence of the active contraction of the muscle fibers and their relaxation respectively. A mapping of this deformation would give increased understanding of the mechanical properties of the heart. The deformation induces strain and stress in the tissue which are both mechanical properties and can be described with a mathematical tensor object. The aim of this master's thesis is to develop a visualization tool for the strain tensor objects that can aid a user to see and/or understand various differences between different hearts and spatial and temporal differences within the same heart. Preferably should the tool be general enough for use with different types of data.

Today, scientists in various biomedical fields rely on biological data sources in their research. Large amounts of information concerning, for instance, genes, proteins and diseases are publicly available on the internet, and are used daily for acquiring knowledge. Typically, biological data is spread across multiple sources, which has led to heterogeneity and redundancy. The current thesis suggests grouping as one way of computationally managing biological data. A conceptual model for this purpose is presented, which takes properties specific for biological data into account. The model defines sub-tasks and key issues where multiple solutions are possible, and describes what approaches for these that have been used in earlier work. Further, an implementation of this model is described, as well as test cases which show that the model is indeed useful. Since the use of ontologies is relatively new in the management of biological data, the main focus of the thesis is on how semantic similarity of ontological annotations can be used for grouping. The results of the test cases show for example that the implementation of the model, using Gene Ontology, is capable of producing groups of data entries with similar molecular functions.

This master thesis report describes signal processing parameters of electroencephalography (EEG) signals with a significant difference between the signals from the animal model of clinical depression and the non-depressed animal model. The signal from the depressed model had a weaker power in gamma (30 - 80 Hz) than the non-depressed model during awake and it had a stronger power in delta (1.5 - 4 Hz) during sleep. The report describes the process of using visualisation to understand the shape of the signal which helps with interpreting results and helps with the development of parameters. A generic tool for time-frequency analysis was improved to cope with the size of the weeklong EEG dataset. A method for evaluating the quality of how well the EEG parameters are able to separate the strains with as short recordings as possible was developed. This project shows that it is possible to separate an animal model of depression from an animal model of non-depression based on its EEG and that EEG-classifiers may work as indicative classifiers for depression. Not a lot of data is needed. Further studies are needed to verify that the results are not overly sensitive to recording setup and to study to what extent the results are translational. It might be some of the EEG parameters with significant differences described here are limited to describe the difference between the two strains FSL and SD. But the classifiers have reasonable biological explanations that makes them good candidates for being translational EEG-based classifiers for clinical depression.