Successful Marine Metagenomics Bioinformatics training at EMBL-EBI

On 24th-28th March 2014, twenty researchers from ten European countries, alongside a further five researchers from countries further afield attended a five day training course on Marine Metagenomics Bioinformatics. The course was organised by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) from the UK in collaboration with the Ribocon GmbH and Jacobs University Bremen as part of the Micro B3 project.

Thirteen trainers, both from EMBL-EBI, the Max Planck Institute and from collaborating institutes, delivered high quality training materials on the broad subject area of marine metagenomics data analyses. The course provided marine biologists with training to use publicly available resources to manage, share, analyse and interpret metagenomics (both amplicon and WGS) data. The course was delivered using a mixture of lectures, practical computer sessions and discussions based on marine biological case studies with public domain data. Throughout the course, there was excellent opportunity for networking. The trainers also contributed to the networking opportunities, interacting with participants to discuss particular topics. Additionally, there was opportunity for attendees to review the key opportunities and challenges within the field, particularly, in preparation for the Micro B3 Ocean Sampling Day in June 2014.

The feedback from participants was very good, with almost all participants having rated the overall quality of the course as excellent (36%) or good (52%). The balance between theoretical and practical work was generally deemed to be about right and 88% of participants would recommend the course to colleagues. Participants reported that they found the course extremely helpful, and will be able to go back to conduct more in depth analysis as a result.

 Participant Comments

“The course was very good and most certainly should be repeated more times.”

“I was very happy to attend this course. I had nearly no pre-knowledge about this topic, but the course was structured very well and I had nearly no troubles following.”