The Association for the Promotion of Fingerprinting and other DNA Technologies (ADNAT), Hyderabad is organizing international hands-on training course on DNA sequencing and genotyping at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) from February 25 to March 10, 2002. The programme is held as a part of the sixth annual national convention of ADNAT, which begins on February 23, 2002. The training course has been targeted at the persons who are engaged in modern biological research and would like to use STR's, SNP's and sequence data in their work.

The course is designed to train young investigators who are working in the field of human genetics, medical genetics, agriculture, live stock, wild life, microbiology and forensic sciences. A total of 15 participants are to be entertained.

The organizers informed that six of the participants would be sponsored candidates from NAM countries. The sponsorship will come from the Centre for Science and Technology of the non-aligned and other developing countries (NAM), New Delhi. Young investigators from academic institutions, medical and industrial R&D organisations are also likely to participate in the programme.

Explaining the need for the training course they said that the hands-on training course on DNA sequencing and genotyping will be a immense help for those who are already working or who wish to initiate work in the field genome sequence analysis.

Availability of the complete genomic sequence of man as well as many other organisms has been a major achievement of biology. However, deciphering and making use of these sequences has yet to go a long way. The completed DNA sequences available so far, represent only reference sequences of the genome. Each individual's genome, especially in the case of humans, may vary at millions of positions due to single base substitutions (single nucleotide polymorphism or SNPs), increase or decrease of repeat motifs in short tandem repeats (STRs), deletions, insertions (e.g. of Alu sequences) etc. Some of these variations are associated with genetic disorders, and some are polymorphic and do not cause any phenotypic abnormality. Some SNPs could be important for targeting of drugs.

Among the plethora of marker assays available, the STR and the SNPs are the most widely used markers for high-resolution genotyping and high-density genetic mapping with a high degree of accuracy. They thus allow high-throughput genome analysis for diagnosis of genetically inherited disorders, population genetics (extent of inbreeding, genetic diversity within and between populations), forensic and parentage identification, kinship studies, gene mapping and gene tagging, livestock and crop improvement, pharmacogenomics and molecular taxonomy etc. Use of automation in polymerase chain reaction (PCR), DNA sequencing and genotyping, increases the efficiency of the whole process several-fold.

"In view of these recent developments in genome research, we have arranged this hands-on training course on DNA sequencing and genotyping for those who are already working or who wish to initiate work in this field," they said.

The topics that would be covered in the course include the use of database for the identification of STRs, primers designing, PCR amplification of STRs, Gel electrophoresis (agarose and acrylamide), STR analysis (using ABI377 and ABI 3700), Sizing of alleles and Genotyping, PCR amplification of SNPs, Identification of SNPs by restriction digestion, Identifying SNPs by sequencing (ABI3700), PCR amplification of mtDNA (D-loop and cytochrome b) and Sequencing of mtDNA (D-loop and cytochrome b).

Hands-on training will be given in DNA sequencing and genotyping in population genetics, disease diagnosis, forensic and paternity test, crop and animal improvement, phylogenetic analysis, conservation genetics, network analysis of STR and sequence data, PHYLIP analysis of sequence data and sequence analysis.

The expected faculty for the programme are Prof. E D Southern Oxford University, UK, Dr Justen Andrews, Indiana University USA, Dr Johnannes Beckers, IEG Germany, Dr Siyaram Pandey, University of Windsor, Canada, Dr Guruprasad, CCMB, R K Aggarwal, CCMB Hyderabad, U Bhadra, CCMB, Hyderabad, G R Chandak, CCMB, R K Mishra, CCMB, Hyderabad, J Nagaraju, CDFD, Hyderabad, N Nagesh, CCMB, Hyderabad Satish Kumar, CCMB, Hyderabad L Shashidhara, CCMB Hyderabad, Lalji Singh, CCMB, Hyderabad, S Tiwari, CCMB, Hyderabad , Ramesh Sonti, CCMB Hyderabad, K Thangaraj, CCMB, Hyderabad, C Tyler-Smith, Univ. of Oxford, UK and Erika Hegilburg, Univ. of Otago, New Zealand.