- Application of Genomics to Anthropological Research (AGAR) Workshop
Dates: Monday, January 9-Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Location: The Texas Biomedical Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
Organizers: The American Association of Anthropological Genetics (Education Committee) in collaboration with the Texas Biomedical Research Institute
The AGAR Workshop aims to provide students and scholars from the anthropological field with a substantial background in applications of the most state-of-the-art technologies used in genomic investigations. The workshop will be led by experts from the field of genomics, who will instruct and interact with participants in both casual and semi-formal settings.
Specifically, the workshop will comprise (1) keynote lectures from leaders in anthropological genomics, (2) formal presentations describing general as well as anthropology-specific applications of genomic tools, (3) Q&A sessions that address the practical issues of genomic research, (4) informal chalk-talk sessions in which the participants can discuss their own projects, and (5) social events to foster possible collaborations and contacts.
The overall goal of this workshop is to provide anthropologists previously unfamiliar with the field of genomics sufficient knowledge to apply genomic tools to their future research.
Tentative Schedule of Events
Day 1 Monday: Arrival
7:00 -7:30 p.m.: Workshop introduction
7:30 -10:00 p.m.: Mixer
Day 1-Monday: Methodological issues regarding genomic applications
9:00 -10:30 a.m.: Introduction to next generation sequencing
General introduction to different sequencing platforms and basic methodological concepts, such as read-depth, read-pairs, library construction (and tagging), read-length, etc.
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: Calling variants: SNPs, indels and structural variation a regarding next-generation sequencing
A comparison of Sanger sequencing, microarray data (SNP, copy number variants, etc.) and other next-generation sequencing techniques. This session will also feature information on controls, quality checks, false-positive rates.
12:00 -1:00 p.m.: Lunch
1:00 -2:30 p.m.: Large scale analyses of the sequencing data
Analyses of genomic sequence data within the context of association studies and population genetics. [End Page 1]
2:30 -3:30 p.m.: Exome sequencing and human adaptation
This session will discuss techniques array capture and exome sequencing to identify adaptive variation in the genome.
3:30-4:30 p.m.: Ancient genomics
This session will focus on technical issues regarding extracting ancient DNA, preperation of large-scale genome libriaries, sequencing and interpreation of the data.
4:30 -5:30 p.m.: Structural variation
Introduction to different types of genomic structural variations, including copy number variants (CNVs) with an emphasis of methods of "discovering" and "genotyping" such variations using next generation tools.
6:00-8:00 p.m.: Dinner featuring plenary talk
8:00 -10:00 p.m: Mixer
Day 2- Tuesday: Applications of genomic tools to anthropological questions
10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Chalk-talk discussions of potential anthropological genomic projects
Here, the group will discuss 3 possible research questions and projects suggested by the participants, and provide advice on how to design and optimize such projects.
12:30 -1:30 p.m.: Lunch
1:30 -2:30 p.m.: In depth analyses of population history
In this session we will discuss how whole-genome sequencing data can be used to capitalize on recently developed methods that exploit population genetic theory to infer historical parameters such as divergence times, population sizes and migration rates as well as perform model testing.
2:30 -3:30 p.m.: Pathogens and genome evolution
Pathogens have played a critical role in human evolution, thus revealing their evolutionary dynamics may provide novel insights into the history of modern human populations. This session will focus on how unique features of human pathogen data may be utilized to study important events and behaviors in human evolution.
3:30-4:30 p.m.: Comparative genomics and primate genomics
Methods, challenges and future directions in large-scale comparison of primate genomes within and across species using next-generation sequencing.
4:30 -5:00 p.m.: Concluding remarks
Registration: Registration is open to all interested parties, though it will be limited to 40 participants. "Fees are $100 for students, $150 for postdoctoral fellows, and $200 for faculty and other professionals. Fees...