Examination of BC 2024

What is the best definition of Bioinformatics?

• A)  The study of biology using computational methods

• B)  The field of science in which biology, computer science, and information technology merge into a single discipline

• C) The application of information technology to the field of healthcare

• D)  The use of computers to analyze and interpret geological data

What is the purpose of the FASTQ file format?

• A) To store only nucleotide sequences

• B) To store only quality scores for sequences

• C) To store both nucleotide sequences and their corresponding quality scores

• D) To store alignment information of sequences to a reference

What is the purpose of using tools like MetaPhlAn4 and HUMAnN3 in the metagenomics workflow?

• A) To assess the quality of raw sequence data.

• B) For high-resolution taxonomic profiling and functional profiling of microbial communities.

• C) To annotate genes using eggNOG-mapper or DIAMOND against functional databases.

• D) For the de novo assembly of metagenomic reads into contigs.

What does shotgun metagenomics offer that 16S rRNA gene sequencing does not?

• A) Insights into the functional capabilities of microbial communities.

• B) Identification of only bacterial species.

• C) Detection of broad-range PCR amplification across diverse species.

• D) Use of a well-established approach for microbial community profiling.

Which of the following best describes the objective of supervised learning?

• A) To discover hidden structures in data without labels

• B) To make predictions or decisions without any feedback from the environment

• C) To create a model that can make accurate predictions for unknown data

• D) To maximize the rewards from a decision process over time

What is the primary difference between classification and regression in supervised learning?

• A) Classification models are used for predicting categorical outcomes, while regression models are used for predicting numerical outcomes.

• B) Classification is used only for binary outcomes, while regression is used for multiple categorical outcomes.

• C) Regression algorithms are computationally more intensive than classification algorithms.

• D) Classification is used for training models, while regression is used for validating models.

What technique was mentioned as a method to address the issue of small sample sizes in biomedical data?

• A) Overfitting

• B) Data augmentation

• C) Under-sampling

• D) Increasing the number of features

What is a significant challenge in applying AI to biomedical data?

• A) The easy interpretability of models

• B) The abundance of large, balanced datasets

• C) Data protection regulations and the need for interpretable models due to high risks for patients

• D) The lack of variety in data types

Which of the following best describes the difference between phylogeny and classification?

• A) Phylogeny is based on evolutionary relationships, while classification can be based on various criteria such as morphology or pathogenicity.

• B) Phylogeny and classification are interchangeable terms.

• C) Classification is based on evolutionary relationships, while phylogeny can be based on various criteria.

• D) Phylogeny and classification are not related to each other.

In Bayesian phylogenetic inference, what does the prior represent?

• A) The likelihood of the data given the model parameters.

• B) The probability of the model parameters before observing the data.

• C) The posterior probability of the model parameters.

• D) The substitution rate of nucleotides or amino acids.