After last year’s success the second SMRTLeiden Meeting was held between May 2nd and 4th, at Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands. The conference included two events: the SMRT Scientific Symposium and the second European SMRT Informatics Developers Meeting. The two-day long Scientific Symposium featured presentations from key experts and opinion leaders sharing their scientific discoveries and novel analytical achievements using PacBio® sequencing platforms. This event was packed with inspirational lectures that highlighted the latest achievements in various fields: from microbes to human health. Among other interesting scientific achievements Julie Karl from the University of Wisconsin-Madison explained how her group performed comprehensive MHC class I haplotype analysis of 100 cynomolgus macaques, many of which were of known relation to each other making it possible to do a phylogenetic analysis.
The one-day long collaborative Developers Conference focused on discussions about developing and improving analysis tools for PacBio SMRT sequencing data. The event started with a keynote lecture by Gene Myers and several short presentations, which was followed by in-person brainstorming and idea exchange among software developers and the bioinformatics community. The participants concentrated on advancement of new and existing open-source tools for de novo assembly, genome phasing, structural variations and base modification.
Written by Panna Vass (Bioinformatician, Omixon)