FABI hosted a comparative genomics workshop for postgraduate students and staff from 13 to 15 September. The Workshop on Linux Essentials and Variant Discovery with GATK, was presented over three days by Dr Vang Quy Le from the Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark. About 20 FABIans in the Tree Protection Co-operative Programme (TPCP) and the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology (CTHB) participated. 

A specialist in next generation sequencing data analysis, Dr Le is a friend and collaborator of Dr Tuan Duong from their undergraduate years at the Hanoi University of Science in Vietnam. This was also Dr Le’s first visit to FABI. The aims of the workshop were to equip participants with essential skills in using Linux and to impart a practical foundation on Bash scripting and various tools in the Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) that allow users to run scripting programmes and to solve problems by themselves.