Upcoming events hosted by or involving Genetics Otago will be listed here. Please check back regularly for updates. A calendar of events that may be of interest to our members can be found at the bottom of this page and in the sidebar of other pages on this site, please note that this includes events hosted outside of Genetics Otago.
GO Annual Symposium – New Date Confirmed!
As usual, the Symposium will highlight the fantastic research being done by GO members from around the country through presentations, posters and awards. We are aware that this date clashes with a couple of other conferences happening in NZ and we apologise if this means you are unable to attend.
Date: Thursday, 20th February 2025
Time: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Venue: TBC
Programme
A draft programme will be available here soon.
Registration
Registration for this event is now open via the button below. If you had already registered for the event scheduled for December we ask you to please register again so that we have accurate numbers for catering. If you made a payment at that time, this should have been refunded to you – please contact us if you don’t think this has been processed.
Registration will remain open until Monday the 3rd of February, however we hope that by opening now, prior to end of year budget cut-offs, you maybe able to charge the registration fee to any surplus in your 2024 University accounts.
Registration Fee
Due to budget constraints, we will be charging a $50 per person registration fee for all attendees to subsidise the costs associated with the Symposium. We have received confirmation that this registration fee can be paid from S accounts, and if you are in a position to make a donation on top of this fee, we would gladly receive it. However, we do not want the payment to be a barrier to attendance, so if you are not in a position to make a payment, please contact us go@otago.ac.nz.
Payment Methods
Payments from an S account (or other University account) can be journaled to Genetics Otago account GL.10.LH.A14.2541 via your finance associate. Please include the surname(s) of the registrants that the payment covers in the narration.
If you need to make payment using funds from outside the University this can be arranged via the Cashier’s Office. Please contact us for details (go@otago.ac.nz).
Awards
The Annual Genetics Otago Awards including The Genetics Otago Award, Outstanding Mentor Awards, Student Supervisor Award, Publication Awards, Poster Awards and Science Communication Prize will be presented at the conclusion of the Symposium and nominations for these are now open.
All award nominations should be submitted by email to go@otago.ac.nz.
Please note: Award nominations are now open until Monday 3rd February at 5pm.
Full details of the awards can be found here: Award Details.
Calendar of Events
The below is a calendar of events hosted by GO as well as events hosted by others that may be of interest to our members. If you have an event you would like us to include please contact us here.
Schedule available here: https://nanoporetech.com/event/NanoporeDayQueenstown
The Environmental Microbiomes team at Genomics Aotearoa is hosting the annual Metagenomics Summer School once more.
This practical, hands-on workshop focuses on prokaryotic metagenomics. It aims to guide learners through the process of analysing metagenomic sequence data, from metagenomic read sequences to curated metagenome-assembled genomes paired with downstream data analyses and visualisation in R. It also includes the following lessons:
Introduction to Bash shell and scripting (pre-workshop session)
Pragmatic considerations during experiment/sampling planning and decision-making (e.g., how much sequence data do I need? What are the approaches to analysing the data I have?)
Best practices in handling and processing metagenomic data
Viral genome prediction from metagenomic assemblies
This in-person workshop will be held at the University of Auckland, City Campus, from 5th to 8th September 2023. See our Metagenomics Summer School poster.
We invite learners of all bioinformatics skill levels to register their interest here.
Jian Sheng Boey
Genomics Aotearoa Bioinformatics Training Coordinator
jian.sheng.boey@auckland.ac.nz
Join the Malacological Society of Australasia on September 7th, from 12 to 1:40pm (New Zealand time) for an enlightening open online symposium on molecular tools applied to molluscs! We will hear from AP Claudio González Wevar, AP Felipe Aguilera, and DP Hamish Spencer on the application of these tools to very different aspects of malacology. The symposium is free of change, just RSVP to receive a Zoom link. More information can be found on our website.
This online workshop is hosted by Genomics Aotearoa and NeSI and is for New Zealand researchers interested in progressing their skills with the R programming language.
This is an intermediate workshop, please check you meet the prerequisites: Attendees must have introductory knowledge of R and be well versed in tidyverse (Intro to R + supplementary materials in that workshop). We expect that you will either have completed our Introduction to R workshop or have sufficient experience of your own.
Some of the topics covered in the workshop are:
- Introduction to relational data and the join function.
- Working with regular expressions and functions from the stringr package.
- Writing custom functions, working with conditional statements.
- ‘Defensive programming’.
- Iterations – for loops, and map_*() functions.
- The importance of data structure in R.
Setup: This is a fully online, hands-on workshop. This workshop material will be run on the NeSI High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms – there is no need to install any software for this workshop. Instructions on how to access the NeSI HPC service will be sent out with the confirmation letter to registrants.
Participants must have their own laptops and plan to participate actively. You will require a working web browser.
This online workshop is hosted by Genomics Aotearoa and NeSI, and is for New Zealand researchers interested in progressing their abilities with Shell.
This workshop will include:
- An overview of the Shell, UNIX and Linux.
- Downloading data from a remote source and checking data integrity.
- Recap navigating files and directories, and commands used in routine tasks.
- Inspecting and manipulating data, part 1 (the head, less, grep, and sed commands).
- Inspecting and manipulating data, part 2 (using awk and bioawk to process text).
- Automating file processing.
- Challenges: solve example molecular biology problems using shell scripts.
This workshop assumes some familiarity with Shell. You will need to be able to do the following tasks via command line:
- Navigating files and directories.
- An understanding of full versus relative paths.
- Working with files and directories (examining files, creating, copying, moving and removing).
- Use a command line-based text editor such as nano.
And have a basic understanding of:
- File/directory permission in Linux.
- For loops (preferred, not required).
If you lack the above skills, you can use these sites as a refresher – Introduction to Command Line Carpentries lesson https://datacarpentry.org/shell-genomics/
Setup: This is a fully online, hands-on workshop. The workshop material will be run on the NeSI High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms – there is no need to install any software for this workshop. Instructions on how to access the NeSI HPC service will be sent out with the confirmation letter to registrants one week prior to the workshop.
You can view the workshop material, including the objectives and content, here: https://genomicsaotearoa.github.io/shell-for-bioinformatics/
Participants must have their own machine to work on and plan to participate actively in the workshop. You will require a working web browser.
Prof Kennerson is a Professor of Neurogenetics/Neurosciences with the ANZAC Research Institute, Sydney Local Health District (SLHD) and the School of Medical Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia. She heads the Translational Gene Discovery and Functional Genomics Inherited Peripheral Neuropathies Program at the ANZAC Research Institute. Her team has discovered several neuropathy genes and is doing pioneering research to investigate the role of structural variation and its role in new disease mechanisms for hereditary neuropathies. Her research program includes functional studies for recent gene (ATP7A and PDK3) and SV mutation (CMTX3 and DHMN1) discoveries using induced pluripotent stem cell derived motor neurons and animal models (C. elegans). Marina is a board member of the Charcot-Marie-Tooth and Related Neuropathies Consortium (CMTR), Chair of the Asian Oceanic Inherited Neuropathy Consortium (AOINC) serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the CMT Research Foundation, USA and is Deputy Director (Research) of the SLHD Institute of Precision Medicine and Bioinformatics.
We warmly invite you to attend our Genomics Aotearoa seminar, online on Friday, October 13 at 3pm.
We welcome Dr Gabriel Gasque (Head of Outreach, protocols.io) to talk about the power of sharing detailed methods – credit, preservation, and reproducibility.
Please invite colleagues to join our genomics community and take part in this seminar. Look forward to seeing you there. Questions and discussions are welcome.
Join from PC, Mac, iOS, or Android:
https://otago.zoom.us/j/97097442106?pwd=RlczU3VCdFBmbmt4Yng4VW5OcHdSdz09
About Gabriel
Dr Gabriel Gasque is an advocate of open science and experimental reproducibility and integrity. With more than 10 years of experience in the field, Gabriel is an expert in scientific dissemination, communication and publication.
Gabriel currently serves as Head of Outreach at protocols.io, a technology company whose goals are to foster scientific advancement through collaboration between researchers and promote transparency, reproducibility, integrity, and experimental accountability through the sharing and publication of detailed research protocols. Before joining protocols.io, Gabriel was a senior editor and team manager at PLOS Biology, the flagship journal of the Public Library of Science (PLOS).
Gabriel earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and was awarded the Weizmann Prize from the Mexican Academy of Sciences for the best doctoral thesis in 2006. He conducted postdoctoral research at Columbia University and the Rockefeller University in the United States, as a Latin American PEW fellow.”
World-leading CRISPR-Cas researcher, Prof. Dr. Chase Beisel, is visiting the Department of Microbiology and Immunology on a Chaffer fellowship. He will be giving a seminar on October 15th from 1-2 pm in Biochemistry BIG13. Please see the attached flyer for details on this presentation.
SEMINAR: Understanding Reproduction and Development in Honeybees
Tēnā koutou katoa
We warmly invite you to attend our Genomics Aotearoa seminar, online on Friday, October 27 at 3pm.
We welcome Georgia Cullen (University of Otago) to talk about Understanding Reproduction and Development in Honeybees.
Please invite colleagues to join our genomics community and take part in this seminar. Look forward to seeing you there. Questions and discussions are welcome.
Join from PC, Mac, iOS, or Android:
https://otago.zoom.us/j/97097442106?pwd=RlczU3VCdFBmbmt4Yng4VW5OcHdSdz09
About Georgia
Georgia is in the last six months of her PhD at the University of Otago, working with Professor Peter Dearden investigating honeybee reproduction and development, with a particular focus on the germline cell niche in queens.
Are you still using Hi-C to detect TADs and Loops?
If so, you’ll want to explore the groundbreaking Dovetail® TopoLink™ Assay. This innovative solution not only simplifies the Hi-C workflow but also tackles high sequencing costs and uneven genomic coverage. And the best part? The entire process can be completed in just one day without compromising data quality!
November 1st, 2023 07:00 PM PST
In this webinar, you’ll gain insights into:
- The limitations of traditional Hi-C workflows.
- How Dovetail® TopoLink™ chemistry revolutionizes Hi-C data generation.
- Why Dovetail® TopoLink™ data outperforms restriction enzyme-based Hi-C for chromatin conformation analysis.
- Practical considerations for experimental setup and data analysis.
Don’t miss this opportunity to stay ahead in your Hi-C research.
Join us and move your understanding of the 3D genome into the next dimension.
