We just had our fifth meeting!

Post date: Sep 29, 2017 6:21:55 PM

We were happy to have Dan Fornika and Dr. Felix Breden join us for our fifth meeting!

"Metagenomic Sequence Classifiers: Kraken and Beyond" - Dan Fornika

Kraken, and other metagenomic classifiers, allow you to classify an unknown mixture of hundreds, if not thousands of organisms. This has important implications for Dan Fornika and his colleages at the BC Center for Disease Control as it allows them to identiy and track pathogenic organisms in a population. Dan joined us today to talk to us about the inner workings of Kraken and how it is able to assign an unknown piece of DNA to a particular organism.

"The Complicated and Poorly Understood Genetics of the Adaptive Immune System" – Dr. Felix Brenden

They say everybody is unique. This certainly seems to be true about the immunoglobulin heavy chain variable gene cluster (IGHV). SFU’s own Dr. Brenden joined us to talk about this key region in our genome that contributes to the adaptive nature of our immune system. He talked about how the variability of the IGHV locus has made it difficult to characterize, how this has limited our ability to study immunity and disease, and the work his lab has done to better our understanding of it.

It was great to see our meeting bring in everyone from researchers willing to share their experience, to undergraduates just getting aquainted with the field. We hope that you’ll join us for the next meeting in October!