Provisional schedule

The course will take place fully online using a flexible model of both synchronous and asynchronous teaching. The course will comprise talks on the theory of metabarcoding and phylogenetics for metabarcoding, guided discussion sessions and detailed practical bioinformatics training. Synchronous sessions will take place on the dates 7-8th and 11-12-13th of January 2021 between 8am and 11am UTC, with support for the guided practicals available 11am to 5pm UTC.

Indicative contents of each day's lectures and practicals are provided below:

Day 1, Thursday 7th January 2021

• Course introduction
• Metabarcoding concepts and applications
• Raw data to reads: guided practical session on the essential first steps in metabarcoding

Day 2, Friday 8th January 2021

• Causes and impacts of errors in metabarcoding
• Error filtering and assessment of filtering success
• Guided practical session on implementing and comparing filtering methods

​Day 3, Monday 11th January 2021

• Generating biological units from metabarcoding data: OTUs and ASV
• Classifying metabarcoding sequences with taxonomy
•  Guided practical session on comparing and assessing methods for OTU clustering and identification

​Day 4, Tuesday 12th January 2021

• The power of integrating metabarcoding and phylogenetics
• Understanding phylogenetic approaches to error filtering and identification of biological units
• Guided practical session on integrating metabarcoding data and phylogenetics

Day 5, Wednesday 13th January 2021

• Synthesis: building the optimal metabarcoding pipeline
• Common pitfalls in performing metabarcoding bioinformatics
• Open practical session on solving metabarcoding challenges and/or for one-on-one advice