As part of the capacity-building activities of the 1st PANGenS in person kick-off meeting, a bioinformatics training was held for bioinformaticians/ research assistants of the PANGenS consortium. Participants were from both Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana (NMIMR-UG) and some of the participating African countries (i.e., Namibia, Gabon, Mozambique, Togo, Nigeria, Tanzania, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Liberia). There were online participants as well.
The one-day training was held on the 18th of January 2024 at the NMIMR-UG conference hall. This was facilitated by Dr. Margo Diricks of the Research Institute, Borstel assisted by Dr. Prince Asare of NMIMR-UG.
Participants arrived at the venue and went through registration from 8:30am through to 9:00am Prior to the training, files containing the SeqSphere+ software and other relevant documents were shared with participants to enable them to install the software and supporting applications before the scheduled training day. The training commenced with an opening lecture on sequencing, quality control and the use of bioinformatics tools as a means of genomic epidemiology studies, disease surveillance and outbreak analysis by Dr. ir. Margo Diricks. She then took participants through the hands-on training on SeqSphere+ bioinformatics tool, its features, and applications.
Participants were also trained for gDNA extraction from Mycobacterium species using the CTAB method. The 16 participants included wet-lab research assistants from Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research and participating countries of the PANGenS consortium. This training was led/facilitated by Dr. Prince Asare, research fellow of the bacteriology department of NMIMR.
The training commenced on the 18th at 5:00pm after a preliminary session on the bioinformatics tool SeqSphere+ by Dr. Margo Diricks. It began with a brief introductory session to the SOP to be used for the training, i.e., Bac- 015 1.1- Standard Operating Procedure for DNA Extraction of Heat-killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex Isolates of the bacteriology department of NMIMR. Participants were then accompanied to the bacteriology department situated at the Advanced Research Laboratories (ARL) complex.
