Third Advanced Bioinformatics Workshop

Research on plant epigenetics helps to understand how endogenous, biotic, and abiotic factors regulate plant growth, development, and interaction with the environment, independently of changes in the genome sequence. The epigenetic modifications are often heritable across several generations and harmonize plant growth and crop tolerance in response to environmental stimuli.

Understanding epigenetic adaptation in plants has the potential to provide powerful tools for crop breeders. However, due to the challenges of working with crops in the field, most mechanistic studies are based on information from model plant species. EpiCass and CassavaNet4Dev are projects financed by the Swedish Research Council, aiming to study the DNA methylation profiles and potential methylation patterns related to African cassava mosaic virus (ACMV) resistance and yield variation in different field-grown cassava genotypes. The projects also aim to disseminating the knowledge gained, and to train plant scientists in Africa and Europe in DNA methylation bioinformatic data analysis by including them in our data analysis efforts.

The objectives of the course are to provide participants with:

• use of the Linux command-line and R as tools for data analysis
• understanding the basics of molecular biology and epigenetics
• understanding the basics of NGS and NGS data analysis
• ability to perform QC assessment on NGS data 
• ability to perform mapping using NGS data
• ability to perform a DNA methylation profiling in plants