Course FAQs for PoreCamp 2016
Welcome to Penryn and the University of Exeter. We are delighted to welcome you to the course and hope you will learn and enjoy much during the next week.
Course structure
This is the second instalment of the PoreCamp series founded by Nick Loman and Josh Quick. It was previously run at the University of Birmingham and will take a similar structure with many of the same instructors. We will have an introduction to the course and to each other on Monday 15th. Following this you will be assigned to a rotation group which will spend a day on each of the following stations: QC & Library prep, MinIon running and hacking, Bioinformatics analysis. Everyone will rotate through each of these stations spending a day on each. The Friday of the course will be devoted to bioinformatics analysis.
What to bring
- Yourself
- A modern laptop with a reasonable screen size (e.g. 14-15 inch) and suitable power cords and adaptors for UK power sockets (this will not be used for MinIon sequencing, but rather to connect to resources to analyse MinIon data). Just in case, please also bring an Ethernet cable and adaptor if required.
- Your favourite lab coat if you have one (we will be able to provide one if needed)
- Pens, markers and something suitable for use as a lab-book
What will we be sequencing?
We aim to sequence 3-4 genomes from the 1000 fungal genomes project and publish the results in collaboration with the project. We will be using the latest R9 flowcells and preparing 2D barcoded libraries to run across approximately 3 flowcells each day.
Can I bring my own material?
We are happy for participants to bring one sample of their own material for sequencing provided it is either genomic or amplicon material. However, please do not rely on the course to obtain results for your experiment. Flowcells are limited and it is unlikely that you will generate sufficient data for your experiment.
If you do wish to bring your own material, please ensure you prepare no more than two slides outlining what the sample is and why it is interesting. Where possible it should also include including Agilent Tapestation or equivalent and estimates of concentration. We will need a minimum of around 500ng-1ug of material. We will assess the QC data as part of the course. A Tapestation will be onsite to perform QC.
Again, we reiterate - please do not rely on this course to generate data for your experiment. We view the QC exercise as important to demonstrate the range of DNA quality and its impact on library prep and sequencing rather than to ensure that we obtain a good library and data from a given sample.
New developments
There have been a few new developments from Oxford Nanopore over the past few weeks including 1D rapid library prep kits and also the new Spot On flowcells. Whilst we’ll be focussing on the 2D preps, we should also have time for a demo of the 1D prep. We will also be using the new Spot On flowcells.