Two-day course Bioinformatics for epigenomics

On September 30 and October 1, 2026, the Hanze Sequencing Facility offers the two-day course Bioinformatics for epigenomics. This professional advanced training emanates from and is funded by the Epi-Guide-Edit and is especially interesting for researchers and HBO/university teachers in life sciences.

This two-day course provides a practical introduction to the analysis and interpretation of analysing epigenetic editing induced effects in epigenomics and RNA-seq data, using a real multi-omics dataset throughout.

Participants will work with sequencing data from DNA methylation, chromatin accessibility, protein–DNA interactions and gene expression, gaining insight into how these layers contribute to the effect of epigenetic editing.

The course combines lectures, hands-on exercises, and reproducible analysis workflows in R, enabling participants to understand both the experimental context and the computational steps required to move from raw data to biological interpretation.

Programme

Day 1
09:30 - 12:30:

• Lecture: Introduction to epigenomics and epigenetic editing
• Lecture: Methylome sequencing
• Hands-on: Working with methylome sequencing data
• Guest lecture of research case

12:30 - 13:30: Lunch
13:30 - 17:00:

• Lecture: Introduction to ATAC-seq and ChIP-seq
• Hands-on: Working with ChIP-seq and ATAC-seq data
• Lecture: Introduction to RNA-seq
• Lecture: The use of public (web-based) analysis tools
• Hands-on: Working with public tools for gene set analysis
• Dinner (optional)

Day 2
09:30 - 12:30:

• Lecture: Gentle introduction to R
• Hands-on: Creating visuals with R, dplyr and ggplot2
• Lecture: Statistical analysis of RNA-seq data
• Hands-on: Working with R and DESeq2
• Guest lecture of RNA-seq study

12:30 - 13:30: Lunch
13.30 - 17:00:

• Lecture: Introduction to biological interpretation of gene sets
• Hands-on: Working on gene sets
• Lecture: The use of ChatGPT and similar tools for biological analysis
• Hands-on: Working with AI tools
• Wrap-up / Q&A

Who should attend

This course is primarily intended for teachers in higher professional education (hbo) and university environments. The focus during the course will be on working with example data files and exercises that can be translated into a curriculum for students.

The course is also useful for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and other life scientists who generate or plan to generate sequence-based omics data and want to better understand how these experiments are designed, analysed and interpreted. Ideally, participants should have some background in molecular or cellular biology and affinity with data driven research. Programming skills are not required for this course.

Course details

• When: Wednesday 30 September & Thursday 1 October 2026
• Location: Hugo R. Kruytgebouw (Z.409), Utrecht, Netherlands
• Costs: € 50 (incl. 2 lunches, dinner on 30 September is optional for € 30)