CAB-Alliance Bioinformatics Workshop

The CAB-Alliance Bioinformatics Workshop will take place on July 3rd - 8th, 2017 in Gabon.

Central African Biodiversity Alliance
Conservation under climate change

DNA sequencing technologies have advanced in such a way that individual researchers and research teams can generate large genomic and transcriptomic datasets quickly and relatively inexpensively. This increased accessibility of genome-scale data has made significant contributions to conservation by revealing cryptic species, identifying at-risk populations, quantifying genetic variation and identifying signatures of selection. However, the most common obstacle to performing genomics studies has become the bioinformatics analysis needed to make sense of these large datasets and diverse computational approaches needed to analyze the data. This workshop will provide background theory behind these topics before moving to a variety of hands-on exercises in conservation genomics and associated bioinformatics pipelines.

The workshop will feature hands-on, practical sessions using datasets generated as part of the CAB-Alliance research program. This research aims to take a genomic approach to mapping patterns of adaptive variation across the Central African landscape and predicting future patterns under projected models of climate change.We will be using datasets generated for two taxa: the forest mouse Praomys misonnei and the golden puddle frog Phrynobatrachus auritus, both of which have been sampled from sites across Gabon and Cameroon. During the workshop, we will follow through the key steps needed in the pipeline used to analyze data and look at ways of exploring environmentally-associated patterns of genetic variation using a variety of available software.