This online seminar provides an overview of current standardization efforts in genomics, epigenomics, and metagenomics, with a focus on practical implementation considerations for researchers and labs.

Challenges and biases in preparing, characterizing, and sequencing DNA and RNA can have significant impacts on research in genomics across all kingdoms of life, including experiments in single cells, RNA profiling, and metagenomics. Technical artifacts and contaminations can arise at each point of sample manipulation, extraction, sequencing, and analysis. Thus, the measurement and benchmarking of these potential sources of error are of paramount importance as next-generation sequencing (NGS) projects become more global and ubiquitous.  

Fortunately, a variety of methods, standards, and technologies have recently emerged that improve measurements in genomics and sequencing, from the initial input material to the computational pipelines that process and annotate the data. 

This webinar reviews work to develop standards and their applications in genomics, including the ABRF-NGS Phase II NGS Study on DNA Sequencing; the FDA’s Sequencing Quality Control Consortium (SEQC2); metagenomics standards efforts (ABRF, ATCC, Zymo, Metaquins), and the Epigenomics QC group of the SEQC2. The webinar will also review he computational methods for detection, validation, and implementation of these genomic measures.

About the GenomeWeb/ABRF 2017 Webinar Series: GenomeWeb has partnered with the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities  for the second year to produce a series of online seminars highlighting methods, techniques, and instrumentation that support life science research. More information about ABRF and its activities is available here. Please check GenomeWeb's webinar schedule for future webinars in this series. The series is sponsored by PerkinElmer.