All Bioinformatics courses

This course aims to provide trainers with guidance and tips for developing and delivering training in image analysis, exploring a range of methods appropriate to different learning styles and examining the requirements for a successful course (both scientific and logistic).

The first part of the course will give participants principles of training theory and best practises for developing and delivering their future training content; the second part will be a hackathon to kick start the development of a common set of training materials in image analysis.

This event is organized in collaboration with the Image Analysis Focused Interest Group and is supported by the Royal Microscopical Society.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online, with tutors available to help you work through the course material on a personal copy of the course environment. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

RNA-Seq technology has been transformative in our ability to explore gene content and gene expression in all realms of biology, and de novo transcriptome assembly has enabled opportunities to expand transcriptome analysis to non-model organisms.

This course provides an overview of modern applications of transcriptome sequencing and popular tools, and algorithms, for exploring transcript reconstruction and expression analysis in a genome-free manner.

Attendees will perform quality assessment and upstream analysis of both Illumina and long reads single molecule sequencing data; the derived transcriptomes will be compared, annotated and used as reference for quantifying transcript expression, leveraging on Bioconductor tools for differential expression analysis. Additional methods will be explored for characterising the assembled transcriptome and revealing biological findings.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Microscopy experiments have proven to be a powerful means of generating information-rich data for biological applications. From small-scale microscopy experiments to time-lapse movies and high-throughput screens, automatic image analysis is more objective and quantitative and less tedious than visual inspection.

This course will introduce users to the free open-source image analysis program CellProfiler and its companion data exploration program CellProfiler Analyst. We will show how CellProfiler can be used to analyse a variety of types of imaging experiments. We will also briefly discuss the basic principles of supervised machine learning with CellProfiler Analyst in order to score complex and subtle phenotypes.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The Ensembl Project provides an interface and an infrastructure for accessing genomic information, including genes, variants, comparative genomics and gene regulation data, covering over 300 vertebrate species. This workshop offers a comprehensive practical introduction to the use of the Ensembl genome browser as well as essential background information.

This course will focus on the vertebrate genomes in Ensembl, however much of what will be covered is also applicable to the non-vertebrates (plants, bacteria, fungi, metazoa and protists) in Ensembl Genomes.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

This workshop will focus on the core steps involved in calling variants with the Broad’s Genome Analysis Toolkit, using the “Best Practices” developed by the GATK team. You will learn why each step is essential to the variant discovery process, what are the operations performed on the data at each step, and how to use the GATK tools to get the most accurate and reliable results out of your dataset.

In the course of this workshop, we highlight key functionalities such as the germline GVCF workflow for joint variant discovery in cohorts, RNAseq­ specific processing, and somatic variant discovery using MuTect2. We also preview capabilities of the upcoming GATK version 4, including a new workflow for CNV discovery, and we demonstrate the use of pipelining tools to assemble and execute GATK workflows.

The workshop is composed of one day of lectures and two days of hands­on training, structured as follows. Day 1: theory and application of the Best Practices for Variant Discovery in high­throughput sequencing data. Day 2 and the morning of Day 3: hands­on exercises on how to manipulate the standard data formats involved in variant discovery and how to apply GATK tools appropriately to various use cases and data types. Day 3 afternoon: hands-on exercises on how to write workflow scripts using WDL, the Broad's new Workflow Description Language, and to execute these workflows locally as well as through a publicly accessible cloud-based service.

Please note that this workshop is focused on human data analysis. The majority of the materials presented does apply equally to non­human data, and we will address some questions regarding adaptations that are needed for analysis of non­-human data, but we will not go into much detail on those points.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

This workshop will focus on the core steps involved in calling variants from Illumina next generation sequencing data using the Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK). You will learn about best practices in calling somatic variants: single nucleotide variants (SNVs), short insertion/deletions (indels) and copy number variants (CNVs). We will also cover considerations to take when calling variants on the mitochondrial genome, as well as variant calling from bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data. We will also cover how the data structures provided by GATK can help you process large datasets in parallel and at scale. Although this workshop focuses on human data, the majority of the concepts and approaches apply to non-human data, and we will cover some adaptations needed in those situations.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

This course covers state-of-the-art tools and methods for NGS RNA-seq and exome variant data analysis, which are of major relevance in today's genomic and gene expression studies.

It is oriented to experimental researchers, post-doctoral and PhD students who want to learn about the state-of-the-art of genomic variant and transcriptomics data analysis methodologies and carry out their own analysis.

Further information is available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

This 1-week course provides an introduction to data exploration of biological data. It provides a learning journey starting with learning about how we can automate processes that can be reproduced to analyse our biological data.

The course will begin with discussing what opportunities and challenges are associated with aspects of bioinformatics analyses. We will address a subset of them in greater detail in the central part of the course and provide time for participants to practise using some of the associated bioinformatics tools.

Focusing on solutions around handling biological data, we will cover programming in R, version control, statistical analyses, and data exploration. The R component of the course will cover from the foundations of programming in R to how to use some of the most popular R packages (dplyr and ggplot2) for data manipulation and visualisation. No prior R experience or previous knowledge of programming is required. At the end of the course we will address issues relating to reusability and reproducibility.

More information about the course can be found here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This comprehensive course equips you with essential skills and knowledge in bacterial genomics analysis, primarily using Illumina-sequenced samples. You'll gain an understanding of how to select the most appropriate analysis workflow, tailored to the genome diversity of a given bacterial species. Through hands-on training, you'll apply both de novo assembly and reference-based mapping approaches to obtain bacterial genomes for your isolates. You will apply standardised workflows for genome assembly and annotation, including quality assessment criteria to ensure the reliability of your results. Along with typing bacteria using methods such as MLST, you'll learn how to construct phylogenetic trees using whole genome and core genome alignments, enabling you to explore the evolutionary relationships among bacterial isolates. You’ll extend this to estimate a time-scaled phylogeny using a starting phylogenetic tree. Lastly, you'll apply methods to detect antimicrobial resistance genes. As examples we will use Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae, allowing you to become well-equipped to conduct bacterial genomics analyses on a range of species.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

This course will cover concepts and strategies for working more effectively with Python with the aim of writing reusable code. In the morning session, we will briefly go over the basic syntax, data structures and control statements. This will be followed by an introduction to writing user-defined functions. We will finish the course by looking into how to incorporate existing python modules and packages into your programs as well as writing you own modules.

Course materials can be found here.

Note: this one-day course is the continuation of the Introduction to Solving Biological Problems with Python; participants are expected to have attended the introductory Python course and/or have acquired some working knowledge of Python. This course is also open to Python beginners who are already fluent in other programming languages as this will help them to quickly get started in Python.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.