The "Access to Genes and Genomes" workshop will cover the following topics:
- Introduction to Ensembl: origin, goals and organisation of the Ensembl project
- Guided tour of the most important pages of the Ensembl website
- Data mining with BioMart: retrieving datasets using the data-mining tool BioMart
- Comparative genomics and proteomics: orthologues, protein families, whole-genome alignments and syntenic regions
- Variation: SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms), structural variants like CNVs (Copy number variations)
Day 1: The modules on day 1 consist of presentations, followed by a demonstration and exercises. A pre-course survey will allow participants to influence the exact content of the workshop.
Day 2: Focus groups. Attendees will need to book a 30 min time slot. These slots can be booked in groups of two to four participants. The questions and topics need to be something that can be solved with Ensembl and be provided by the registration deadline of 4 pm on Friday, 6th February 2020.