Extracting biological information from gene lists (IN-PERSON)

Beginners

Many experimental designs end up producing lists of hits, usually based around genes or transcripts. Sometimes these lists are small enough that they can be examined individually, but often it is useful to do a more structured functional analysis to try to automatically determine any interesting biological themes which turn up in the lists.

This course looks at the various software packages, databases and statistical methods which may be of use in performing such an analysis. As well as being a practical guide to performing these types of analysis the course will also look at the types of artefacts and bias which can lead to false conclusions about functionality and will look at the appropriate ways to both run the analysis and present the results for publication.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
• Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

• Graduate students, Postdocs and Staff members from the University of Cambridge, Affiliated Institutions and other external Institutions or individuals

Bioinformatics, Biology, Ontologies, nomenclature and classification, Gene-set enrichment analysis, Pathway or network analysis

During this course you will learn about:

• The theory of gene set enrichment, the different types of enrichment test and how they apply to different data
• The available sources of gene sets to analyse
• How to run qualitative and quantitative gene set analyses and how to present the results
• The theory of motif detection and how to prepare your data for such analysis
• How to run a motif detection and evaluate the results

After this course you should be able to:

• Describe the principles of gene set enrichment, and the available sources of gene sets
• Evaluate the statistics used to assess enrichment, and the different ways these can be applied
• Run a number of web-based gene set enrichment tools
• Understand the rationale for motif-based analysis of gene sets
• Run motif searches using the MEME suite

Presentations, demonstrations and practicals

• Free for registered University of Cambridge students
• £ 60/day for all University of Cambridge staff, including postdocs, temporary visitors (students and researchers) and participants from Affiliated Institutions. Please note that these charges are recovered by us at the Institutional level
• It remains the participant's responsibility to acquire prior approval from the relevant group leader, line manager or budget holder to attend the course. It is requested that people booking only do so with the agreement of the relevant party as costs will be charged back to your Lab Head or Group Supervisor.
• £ 60/day for all other academic participants from external Institutions and charitable organizations. These charges must be paid at registration
• £ 120/day for all Industry participants. These charges must be paid at registration
• Further details regarding the charging policy are available here

This is subject to change in line with the training schedule.

1

A number of times per year