The Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) organizes two coupled training workshops on genome-scale approaches to genetic and epigenetic regulation. Participants can register to either workshop independently, or to both workshops. Target audience: researchers, physicians, post-docs, technicians, engineers and students in the domains of life science or bioinformatics. All conferences will be given in English. Registration deadline: June 1st, 2011. Detailed programs and registration forms: http://www.rh.inserm.fr/INSERM/IntraRh/RHPublication.nsf/mDisplayMotsClefsWeb?OpenForm&arg1=17&arg2=# Email: ateliers@inserm.fr Training workshop 211: High-throughput approaches in epigenomics Organizers: Emmanuel Barillot (Institut Curie/INSERM/Mines ParisTech, Paris), Christophe Lavelle (CNRS, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris). Phase I (theory): October 10-12, 2011, Bordeaux (France). Phase II (practical): 2011, Paris, Montpellier, Nice/Marseille (France), and Darmstadt (Germany). Aims. Through its polymorphism, as evidenced by the heterogeneity of its physicochemical properties, chromatin is the support of an information — so-called "epigenetic" — which is superimposed to the genetic information — carried by DNA — to determine cell fate. While genetic sequencing, more and more efficient, provides data at a dizzying pace, the "epigenetic sequencing" is in turn becoming a priority in an attempt to gather all information necessary for the deciphering of cellular function. The challenge of this new quest is obvious when we know that, contrary to genetic information, epigenetic information varies from one cell to another (within the same organism) and in regard with the cell cycle, making the epigenome particularly difficult to establish. However, the first high-resolution epigenetical maps begin to emerge, including information as diverse (and complementary) as the position of nucleosomes, the presence of histone variants and their modifications, the distribution of transcription factors and remodeling factors, and location of DNA methylation. While these profiles accumulate, the need is urgent to develop analytical tools that allow efficient analysis of these data, in hopes of eventually cracking the epigenetic code. The objective of this workshop is to present the most recent techniques (mainly ChIP-seq) in this area, focusing on possible problems commonly encountered in their implementation. Beyond the "wet" technical aspects, a presentation of the most common bioinformatics tools for analysis (peak finding, differential analysis, integrative analysis of profiles, databases, ...) will also be provided. Training workshop 212: Bioinformatics approaches to decipher genome regulation from high-throughput data Organizers: Jacques van Helden (ULB, Belgium), Philipp Bucher (SIB/ISREC, Switzerland). Phase I (theory): October 12-14, 2011, Bordeaux (France). Phase II (practical): December 12-16, 2011, Marseille (France). Aims. Genome regulation plays a crucial role in embryonic development, adaptation of cells, tissues and organisms to their environment, and evolution. This regulation occurs at multiple levels: transcription, RNA maturation (splicing, degradation), micro-RNA, nucleosome occupancy, chromosome conformation. New high-throughput methods offer unprecedented ways to characterize regulatory elements at a genome scale: expression microarrays, ChIP-on-chip, ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, protein binding arrays, etc. Sequencing platforms become available in many institutes, but researchers generally feel some perplexity when they are first confronted to the terabases of novel data. New software tools re being developed to answer those new needs, but their utilization requires to understand the underlying principles, master the parameters, and interpret the significance of the result. The goal of this workshop is to provide researchers with a theoretical and practical training enabling them to apprehend the whole flow of data analysis, from data acquisition to biological interpretation of the results. Jacques van Helden Jacques.van.Helden@ulb.ac.be http://www.bigre.ulb.ac.be/Users/jvanheld/ Laboratoire de Bioinformatique des Génomes et des Réseaux (BiGRe) Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP263 Boulevard du Triomphe, Accès 2, Campus Plaine. B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium