Phylogenetics is essential for comparing biological species and understanding biodiversity for conservation. This workshop discusses the basic principles and methods of phylogenetic inference and what you can learn from phylogenetic estimation. It is intended to help you make informed decisions about which methods to use in your research.

Using real-life data and standard tools that are (mostly) available in Galaxy, the workshop demonstrates the principles behind a variety of methods used to estimate phylogenetic trees from aligned sequence data or distance data.

This is not a "how to" workshop, but is instead aimed at giving you a better understanding of the principles of phylogenetics and how the methods work. Maybe you've even built phylogenetic trees before but want to know more about the principles behind the tools.

*Lead Trainers: *Professor Michael Charleston, University of Tasmania.

Date/Time: 1 July 2024, 11am - 3pm AEST / 10:30am - 2:30pm ACST / 9am - 1pm AWST

Location: Online

Format:

In this online workshop expert trainers will introduce new topics and guide you through hands-on activities to help you put your new skills into action. The exercises we'll cover are beginner level and make use of Galaxy Australia, an online platform that lets you conduct accessible, reproducible, and transparent computational biological research.

Learning outcomes:

By the end of the workshop you should be able to:

• Describe the basic concepts behind phylogenetic trees and how they are made
• Read and interrogate a phylogeny encountered in the literature
• Use standard tools to align a set of molecular sequences
• Assess the quality of a molecular sequence alignment and be able to modify it appropriately for phylogenetic analysis
• Use standard tools to estimate a phylogenetic tree based on a set of aligned molecular sequences
• Assess the reliability of estimated phylogenies with bootstrapping
• Explore phylogenetic signal using phylogenetic networks

We will not cover:

• Workflows from read data to sequences
• How to get an alignment (much: will use automated methods)
• Bayesian phylogenetics: MCMC / BEAST / MrBayes

Who the workshop is for:

This workshop is for Australian molecular biologists who want to know more about phylogenetic trees. You should know how molecular sequence data is produced and what it looks like.

Some familiarity with using Galaxy is assumed. No coding experience is required.

If you are new to Galaxy you will need to register for a free Galaxy Australia account. We recommend watching this brief introduction to Galaxy Australia and working through the Galaxy Basics for Everyone tutorial before joining the workshop.

You must be associated with an Australian organisation for your application to be considered.

How to apply:

This workshop is free but participation is subject to application with selection.

Applications close at 11:59pm AEST, Friday 14 June 2024.

Applications will be reviewed by the organising committee and all applicants will be informed of the status of their application (successful, waiting list, unsuccessful). Successful applicants will be provided with a Zoom meeting link closer to the date. More information on the selection process is provided in our Advice on applying for Australian BioCommons workshops.

Apply here

This workshop is presented by the Australian BioCommons with the assistance of a network of facilitators from the national Bioinformatics Training Cooperative.

This event is part of a series of bioinformatics training events. If you'd like to hear when registrations open for other events, please subscribe to Australian BioCommons