Online Bioinformatic Platforms to support Metabarcoding and Metagenomics research and applications – 26-28 February 2020

The importance of new ‘omics’ techniques and bioinformatics in the assessment, understanding, monitoring and preservation of biodiversity is continuously growing. DNA and eDNA metabarcoding and metagenomics are being employed more and more often providing big data for efficient biomonitoring, however, there is a certain difficulty in establishing good procedures for the analysis of metagenomics datasets. Therefore, it is important to bring together experts in this area in order to discuss the topic and find solutions for this challenge.

To move forward on this idea, we have joined forces with our partners. This workshop, jointly organized by EnvMetaGen, CIBIO-InBIO, PORBIOTA, LifeWatch ERIC, and DNAqua-Net is a first brainstorming between the key research groups that in the national LifeWatch ERIC nodes are active on genomic approaches to biodiversity assessment, understanding, monitoring and preservation. Overall, the meeting aims to explore how LifeWatch ERIC can integrate online bioinformatics pipelines in its Virtual Research Environment, which can then be used by the wider scientific community for research and applications in the fields of biodiversity survey and environmental biomonitoring.

The event takes place from February 26-28 at CIBIO-InBIO facilities in Vairão. It can be attended by invitation only.