Education

The Hanze Sequencing Facility offers various educational modules on Next Generation Sequencing. These modules are accessible to both Hanze University of Applied Sciences students and external participants. Offered in collaboration with the Hanze DataLab, the modules provide insight into practical web-lab Next Generation Sequencing operation as well as dry-lab Next Generation Sequencing bioinformatic analysis.

The practically designed modules are based on the Oxford Nanopore long-read (MinION) and Illumina short-read (MiSeq) platforms. These modules are part of the bachelor and master programmes in bioinformatics and data science offered by Hanze University of Applied Sciences. Examples of Next Generation Sequencing practicals developed by our teaching staff include:

• Metagenomic sequencing of the soil microbiome: investigating salt stress in wheat fields in North Friesland (February 2025)
• Metagenomic sequencing of the gut microbiome: influence of chili peppers on the gut (December 2024)
• Metagenomic sequencing of the skin microbiome: the use of different hand sanitizers (December 2023)
• Methylation sequencing of the Jurkat cancer cell line: the effects of betulinic acid on cancer treatment (December 2023)
• Direct RNA sequencing: rapid detection of bee hemolymph virosomes (January 2020)

Collaboration with educational and knowledge institutions 
New practicals are regularly developed for the Biomedical Research and Biomedical Diagnostics programmes to prepare students for their future professional practice. Wherever possible, we like to collaborate with other educational and knowledge institutions to strengthen Next Generation Sequencing education and prepare students for a career in life sciences.

In-company and on-demand courses
We offer Next Generation Sequencing training to external parties. This training is available to researchers and professionals working in academia, healthcare, biotech/pharma, and industrial microbiology, as well as anyone who wants to develop practical or analytical Next Generation Sequencing skills. For example, in 2016 and 2017, we provided a Next Generation Sequencing processing course (Linux for the Lab) for the department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Groningen through the IT Academy Noord-Nederland.

We also offer on-demand Next Generation Sequencing training courses. These include for example Next Generation Sequencing theory and courses on Oxford Nanopore sequencing operation and bioinformatic analysis and Illumina sequencing operation and bioinformatics analysis.