The University of Tuscia (UNITUS) was founded in 1979 and quickly developed into what it is today: the hub of culture and learning in the province, offering courses suited to the requirements of local, national, and international students. The educational activities are managed by six Departments. Our degree program is tailored to meet the demands of the European and international job markets.

The training activities are organized by six departments and are divided into 23 degree courses, 25 master’s degree courses and 2 single-cycle five-year master’s degree courses. The university also offers the opportunity to continue training with seven PhD programs and a graduate school.

The Department for Innovation in Biological, Agro-food and Forest systems – DIBAF is a multidisciplinary research and teaching department, awarded Departments of Excellence at national level by the Italian Ministry of Research. The success has been built on the main vocation of the Department that is strongly interdisciplinary, including four different thematic areas of research and teaching: Biotechnology, Environment and Management of Agro-Forestry Resources, Agri-Food Sciences, Landscape and Cultural Heritage, with a clear emphasis on the employment of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analysis on Biotechnology, Food Science, Landscape Management and Global Change.

The Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences – DEB is a multidisciplinary research and teaching department, with research laboratories active in several fields of hard sciences, life sciences and earth sciences. The educational offer of the DEB includes eight degree courses, four Bachelor’s and four Master’s Degree courses, among which a Master Degree in Experimental Biology and Bioinformatics. Our courses prepare researchers, technicians, and highly specialized professionals in Biological, Natural and Environmental Sciences, but also in applied fields such as Physical Education and Human Nutrition. A PhD course in Ecology and Sustainable Management of Environmental Resources is also available.

Since 2020 at DEB a Bioinformatics Center focused on big data analysis and modeling biological data through machine learning is active and available for all the research groups.

UNITUS main bioinformatic topics of interest are:

• Genomics: variant detection; exome and genome re-sequencing; de novo genome assembly; quality assessment of assemblies
• Transcriptomics: analysis of RNA-seq, microarrays; de novo transcriptome assembly; small RNA expression analysis; functional analysis of differentially expressed genes and pathway enrichment analysis
• Genome assembly
• Genome/transcriptome functional annotation: annotation of genes, transcripts, DNA motifs, promoters, and other regulatory elements
• Metagenomics: identification of microbial from metagenomic shotgun sequencing data.
• Ancient DNA analysis
• ChIP-Seq and Protein functional annotation
• Ligand-Protein Docking
• Protein modeling and Molecular Dynamics simulations