NGS Analysis for Complex Traits (Crash Course Berlin)


From June 18-22, I took a crash course in NGS Analysis for Complex Traits, hosted by MDC Berlin, organized by Baylor College of Medicine and CCG (Cologne Center for Genomics) University of Cologne. This course was instructed by Prof. Dr. Suzanne Leal from Baylor College of Medicine and Prof. Dr. Michael Nothnagel from CCG (Cologne Center for Genomics) University of Cologne.
The focus of the course was on both theoretical and application of methods to analyze next generation sequence (NGS) data for human complex traits. The topics that were included in this short course were: calling variants from NGS data, quality control of NGS data, association testing framework for quantitative and qualitative traits (fixed effects, random effects and mixed models), rare variant association methods, estimating power and sample size for rare variant association studies. 



We mainly learnt how to call variants from NGS data, analysis of population-, trio- and family-based sequence data and evaluation of variant functionality. The course also contained practical sessions in which we were exposed to a variety of computer programs (GATK, IGV, Polyphen2, PSEQ, SEQPower, SEQSpark and Variant Association Tools (VAT)).
Overall, it was a very nice experience and I learnt a lot of new and interesting methods to analyze next generation sequence (NGS) data and I am very much looking forward to applying them in my upcoming projects. 
 
SH

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