WK 8
Environmental Sequencing Approaches and Computational Tools for Ecologists
Sunday, August 10, 2014: 8:00 AM-5:00 PM
309/310, Sacramento Convention Center
Organizer:
Holly Bik, University of Birmingham
Co-organizers:
W. Kelley Thomas, University of New Hampshire;
Dorota L. Porazinska, University of Colorado; and
Simon Creer, Bangor University
This workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary pool of researchers to discuss current approaches, challenges, and future directions for environmental sequencing studies (-omic studies of bacteria, archaea and microbial eukaryotes). The workshop program will introduce ecologists to common data types and scientific workflows currently employed for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data (e.g. Illumina/454). Participants will be given overview presentations and hands-on demonstrations for a number of different approaches, including rRNA marker gene analysis, shotgun metagenomics, and metatranscriptomics. This workshop will introduce participants to computational biology tools and software pipelines which can be harnessed for DNA/RNA-based “ecometagenomic” studies. In addition, we aim to solicit feedback from workshop participants, fostering discussions on how to establish better links between traditional ecological research and new, high-throughput sequencing approaches.
