Registration is now open for the UK 2015 Genome Science meeting

Registration for the 2015 Genome Science meeting is now open. This is the meeting formally known as Genome Science: Biology, Applications and Technology, which in turn was formally known as The UK Next Generation Sequencing Meeting. I expect that next year it will just be known as Genome.

It's a fun meeting which all the cool kids go to, and it's in Brum so you will at least be able to get a decent curry.

The scientific sessions will be as follows:

  • 20 years of bacterial genomics: Dr Nick Loman, University of Birmingham
  • Environmental genomics: Dr Holly Bik, University of Birmingham
  • Functional genomics: Associate Professor Aziz Aboobaker, University of Oxford
  • New technologies: Dr Mike Quail, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
  • Plant and animal genomics: Mr Mick Watson, Edinburgh Genomics
  • Novel computational methods: Professor Chris Ponting, University of Oxford
  • Single cell genomics, Professor Neil Hall, University of Liverpool

It is not altogether inconceivable that evening entertainment will be provided by The Nick & Mick Show, where Messrs. Loman and Watson might showcase their latest venture — Nanopore: the musical.

When will ‘open science’ become simply ‘science’? →

A great commentary piece by Mick Watson (@BioMickWatson) in Genome Biology where he discusses the six O's (Open data, Open access, Open methodology, Open source, Open peer review, and Open education). On the former:

…it is no longer acceptable for scientists to hold on to data until they have extracted every last possible publication from it. The data do not belong to the scientist, they belong to the funder (quite often the taxpayer). Datasets should be freely available to those who funded them. Scientists who hoard data, far from pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge, instead act as barriers to discovery.

Amen.

101 questions with a bioinformatician #26: Kerstin Howe

Kerstin Howe is a Senior Scientific Manager, leading the Genome Reference Informatics group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. As part of the Genome Reference Consortium (GRC), Kerstin’s group is helping ensure that “the human, mouse and zebrafish reference assemblies are biologically relevant by closing gaps, fixing errors and representing complex variation”.

This important work entails the generation of ‘long range’ information (sequencing and optical mapping) for a variety of genomes and using that information to provide genome analyses, visualise assembly evaluations, and curate assemblies. You may also wish to check out 101 questions interviewee #3 (Deanna Church), another key player in the GRC.

Kerstin is not my first ‘101 Questions’ interviewee that I know from my time working on the WormBase project. Unlike interviewee #23 though, I did have the pleasure of sharing an office with Kerstin — or WBPerson3103 as she will forever be known in WormBase circles — during my time at the Sanger Institute. It was after leaving WormBase that she became a big fish (of a little fish) in the vertebrate genomics community. And now, on to the 101 questions…

Read More