PENANG, 16 December 2013 - The inaugural five-day Bioinformatics workshop hosted by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) School of Biological Sciences (SBS) was launched today by SBS Deputy Dean (Research) Associate Professor Dr Amirul Al-Ashraf Abdullah.

The workshop is one of the research and academic activities between RIKEN and USM as USM has more than 10 of its students who have either successfully completed or are currently conducting PhD research at RIKEN under the Joint Graduate Programme, also known as the International Programme Associate (IPA).

Besides IPA, a RIKEN-USM Joint Laboratory for Bioprobes Discovery has also been established in USM to provide hands-on training to USM students and staff, and others who are interested.

Being an integral part in many areas of biology, bioinformatics has been chosen as the theme and subject of this workshop.

The workshop provides hands-on opportunities for participants on topics such as the tapping of on-line resources, the next generation of sequencing and genomic sequence assembly, gene prediction and functional analysis, ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequencing and analysis, and metabolic pathway reconstruction.

“We hope that this bioinformatics workshop can be made into an annual event, encouraged by the overwhelming response that we received,” said Amirul.

Also present at the event were the workshop adviser Professor Dr. K. Sudesh Kumar, RIKEN workshop trainer Dr. Todd Taylor, and workshop coordinators Dr. Shinji Kondo and Dr. Tulika Prakash. - Text & Photo: Yong Check Yoon