[Sept 20, 2018] SFU Omics Group 15th Meeting – Picking an algorithm

Post date: Oct 9, 2018 5:11:02 PM

We kicked off the first meeting of the fall semester with two great speakers, Dr. Liangliang Wang and Sean La, who gave us some fascinating insight into the algorithms powering common sequence analyses!

“Sequential Monte Carlo Algorithms for Bayesian Phylogenetics” - Dr. Liangliang Wang

How do you build an accurate phylogenetic tree from thousands, or millions of sequences when checking every possible combination would take forever? Sequential Monte Carlo algorithms allow you to arrive at a likely tree in a reasonable amount of time.

“Simulated or real? Challenges in benchmarking long read correction algorithms” - Sean La

New DNA sequencing technologies produce long, but error-prone reads. A variety of algorithms have been developed to correct these errors using shorter, more accurate reads, but which one is the best? Sean and colleagues developed a pipeline to evaluate these algorithms.

We hope to see you out for the next meeting!