The course will cover the use of cutting-edge techniques belonging to the “meta-omics”. Specifically,, it will analyse the technique of metabarcoding, which allows, through DNA sequencing, the study of communities of organisms in an environmental sample, and metabolomics, which studies the complex of metabolites present in a sample taken directly from the environment.

Dates
Thursday 16 April, 2:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday 17 April, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Location
Botanical Garden, classroom TBD

Programme

Metabolomics:
• Introduction to metabolomics with an overview of the role of primary and secondary metabolites
modulated in different environmental factors.
• Description of the metabolomics workflow:
– Sample collection and organization (harvesting, drying, extracting the material, preparing and
purifying the sample for the analysis),
– Pre-analytical procedures (i.e., derivatization and separation),
– Data acquisition using instrumentation applied in metabolomics studies (i.e., GC-MS, LC-MS, and
NMR),
– Data analysis, metabolites identification and data submission to public repositories.

– Cases of study

Metagenomics:
• Introduction to metagenomics (marker gene studies and whole-genome shotgun)
• Description of marker gene studies (metabarcoding) workflow:
• Sample collection
• DNA extraction
• Marker gene selection and amplification
• Sequencing
• Bioinformatic and statistical data analysis

– Cases of study