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Summer school in bioinformatics 2022 Program

Part 1: - Comparative Genomics.

Lecturer: prof. dr. Mikael Lenz Strube (DTU, Lyngby, Denmark)

The overall teaching aims of this module is to create competence in the students in terms of independently perform comparative analysis on bacterial genomes on the Linux command line.


Specifically, we will:

  • Download all genomes of either Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas fluorescens or Phaeobacter piscinae

  • Annotate the genetic content of these genomes

  • Profile the prophage content of these genomes

  • Profile the secondary metabolism of these genomes

  • Build a whole-genome phylogeny of the genomes

  • Infer the linkage between data-driven analysis and fundamental biology



The successful student will

  • Have a working knowledge of the Linux command line

  • Be able to use suggested command line tools

  • Investigate the bioinformatic literature to find further tools relevant for the biological questions

  • Infer the biological relevance of the genetic content in bacteria

  • Discuss the implications of phylogeny, genetic content and potential phenotype

Day 1

Introduction to the command line, the conda package manager and the bash scripting language. Downloading and annotating.


9:00 – 9:15   Introduction and course overview

9:15 – 10:00: Interactive lecture [Le1]: setting up the command line (prior Linux install is expected)

10:00 – 12:00   Linux exercises (Ex1) – navigating, copying and loops

12:00 – 13:00:  Lunch

13:00 – 14:00: Lecture [Le2]: Basic genome assembly and what we can download.

14:00 – 15:00: Genome download & overview – how & what software? (Ex 2)

15:00 – 17:00: Genome annotation – new environments and our first loop (Ex 3)

Day 2

Day 2:
Finding the functional gene content and building a phylogeny
9:00 – 9:30:   Recap and follow up [Le3] – the hard parts of bioinformatics?
9:30 – 10:00: Lecture [Le4] – annotation of phages and BGCs
10:00 – 11:00: Prophage annotation (Ex4) – another loop, another package
11:00 – 12:00: BGC annotation (Ex5) – yet another loop and a different package
12:00 – 13:00: Lunch
13:00 – 14:00: Phylogeny, Trees and Genotypes [Le5]
14:00 – 16:00: Building a core genome phylogenetic tree and finding patterns

Social interactions through knowledge exchange

IMG_0488_edited_edited.jpg

Day 3

Day 3 will be  a fun day! In the morning we will get to know each other on a boat that will take us through the center of Ljubljana (if weather permits) and after lunch we will have presentations, where a few students will present their experience with bioinformatic tools in short presentations.

Presentations and titles


Rok Zajc                                  Intragenomic oligonucleotide frequencies in shot-gun metagenomics


Neža Pajek Arambašić          Metagenomic Analysis of skin Microbiome with QIIME2


Eva Grabner                           Genomically defining a new Prevotella species


Karmen Jeseničnik                 Plasmid pRK100: Sequencing, Assembly and Analysis of Complete Nucleotide Sequence


Cristina Bez                             The rice foot rot pathogen Dickeya zeae alters the in-field plant microbiome 


Leon Marič                               In-house Pipeline for Quality Control of Next-Generation Sequencing data.


Ursa Miklavčič                         Comparison of analysis approach (ASV vs OTU) in human, cattle and pig gut microbiota


Lan Gerdej                              Differential expression analysis

Part 2: Microbial Ecology and Research Data Management


Lecturer: prof. dr. Ulisses Nunes da Rocha (Helmholtz, Leipzig, Germany)

The overall teaching aims of this module is to create competence in the students in terms of independently perform and discuss amplicon sequencing analysis and prepare to care for the research data cycle of their data.


Specifically, we will:

  •          Understand concepts in Ecology and Biodiversity

  •          Connect Ecological concepts to amplicon sequencing data analysis

  •          Discuss amplicon sequencing data

  •          Be able to plan their amplicon sequencing data based on hands on experience in an example

  •          Plan the research data cycle of their data and connect their data to potential meta-studies

  •          Understand the research data cycle and best practices in research data management



The successful student will

  •      Have a basic working knowledge of the R command line

  •      Be able to use suggested command line tools

  •      Investigate the repositories to perform metastudies

  •      Plan the research data cycle of their research

  •      Discuss biodiversity analysis in the light of research data management






Before the second part, please check out this paper and the Github page of the tool we will be using:

Day 4

9:00 – 9:15   Introduction and course overview

9:15 – 12:00 Microbial ecology and biodiversity (lecture)

12:00 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 16:00 Instructions and installations of necessary programs 

Day 5

9:00 – 12:00 Microbial ecology and biodiversity analises (part 1) 

12:00 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 15:30 Microbial ecology and biodiversity analises (part 2)

15:30 Closing remarks

The difficulty of the computational work will be adjusted to the level of knowledge of the participants on the spot, therefore a detailed program is not available.

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