Genetic Association Course (MDC) Berlin

The eight Annual Berlin Genetic Association Course was held at Max Delbruck Center (MDC) in Berlin from June 24-28, 2019. This course was instructed by Prof. Dr. Suzanne Leal (Columbia University) and Prof. Dr. Michael Nothnagel from CCG (Cologne Center for Genomics) University of Cologne, Germany. 

The emphasis of this course was on the analysis of population-based whole genome and exome data including genotype and sequence data. Topics that were covered in this course were: Association analysis of qualitative and quantitative traits; single marker and haplotype analysis; analysis of whole-genome association study data; complex trait rare variant association analysis of next-generation sequence data; data quality control for genotype and next-generation sequence data; haplotype reconstruction; tagSNP selection; controlling population admixture (genomic control, principal components analysis, etc); imputing genotype data from sequence and genotype data; power and sample size estimation for both genotype and rare variant data; permutation (estimating empirical p-values); and false discovery rate (FDR). We were also given a hand on experience on number of Bioinformatics tools like PLINK, GenABEL, MACH, UNPHASED, EIGENSTRAT, Variant Association Tools (VAT), SEQPower and R, etc.

The best part of this course was that instead of working on the dummy data I was able to work on my own data and therefore discuss my results.  Furthermore, it was good to chat about the problems I was facing – and will face – with some great options on how to address them. All in all, it was very nice experience and I learnt a lot of new things during this course.  I would definitely recommend this course for others!

SH