ConGen - Online Due to COVID-19
ConGen 2020
Conservation Genetics, Population Genomics
September 7-18, 2020
2020 Instructors
2020 Schedule
The goal of ConGen is to provide training in conceptual and practical aspects of data analysis to understand the evolutionary and ecological genomics of natural and managed populations.
New this year is more focus on genome sequencing, assembly, and re-sequencing of whole genomes to prepare participants and instructors for the future which will involve far more whole-genome data production and analyses. Emphasis will be on next-generation sequence (NGS) data analysis (RADs, DNA capture, and whole-genome sequence analyses, and gene expression) and interpretation of output from recent novel statistical approaches and software programs. The course promotes interactions among early-career researchers (students/participants) and leaders in population genomics to help develop the "next generation" of conservation and evolutionary geneticists. We will identify and discuss developments needed to improve data analysis approaches.
This course will cover analysis methods including the coalescent, Bayesian, and likelihood-based approaches. Special lecture sessions and hands-on exercises will be conducted on population structure, detecting selection, and genetic monitoring (of Ne, FST, etc.), landscape genomics, inbreeding detection (RoH), GWAS to identify adaptive loci, genomic vulnerability assessment and more. It will also include lectures and hands-on activities on gene expression mechanisms underlying rapid adaptation to environmental change.
This course is sponsored by the American Genetic Association, the Journal of Heredity, NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NSF (the Dimensions in Biodiversity program), along with PacBio, DoveTail Genomics, and support from the publications eDNA, Evolutionary Applications, and Conservation Genetics. It includes at least 12 expert instructors and hands-on data analysis using your data (with instructors) and dummy data sets provided by instructors. It has led to publications describing the main topics and outcomes of the course in past years, with the goal of facilitating data analysis for population geneticists worldwide. For example, see 4 pubs below: