LBMC bioinformaticians and scientists from 5 different research groups at LBMC were able to visit Prof. Eran Segals’ group at Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel to learn about state-of-art studies and approaches for metagenomics data analysis to advance microbiome research. On the first day of the visit, Professor Eran Segal presented the vision, projects, and results of the Segal Lab, and many questions on various details were discussed. Next, Saar Shoer presented on an expanded reference map of the human gut microbiome. Liron Zahavi then discussed associating bacterial SNPs with host phenotypes and Amit Lavon presented a reference-free metagenomic association study. The second day of the event began with a presentation by Dr. Adina Weinberg on bacterial strain isolation. Amit Lavon then returned to present a closer look at analyzing gut bacteriophages. After lunch, Nastya Godneva presented on microbiome and diet, Saar Shoer followed with a presentation on strain level analysis in clinical studies and then closed out the day with a discussion on the evolution and ecology of the gut microbiome. On the final day presentations were given by the Latvian team. Ivars Silamikelis discussed taxonomic analysis of metagenome data, Dita Gudra presented on metagenome analysis at Fridmanis lab, Nikita Fomins spoke on nutri-metagenomics, Pavels Zajakins presented on analysis of small RNA-seq data derived from biofluids, Rihards Saksis talked about 16S rRNA analysis at LBMC, and Laura Ansone discussed cohorts at LGDB. After lunch, a tour around the campus was conducted, followed by a summary and discussion session to close out the event.
The full agenda available here: agenda