22 February 2013: Seminar organized by CBU and the Sea Lice Research Centre

Title: Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) detection: various approaches to correlate genotypes and phenotypes

Speaker: Francois Besnier, Havforskningsinstituttet (Institute of Marine Research)

Abstract: Establishing correlation beween genotype and phenotype is an essential step to understand the genetic architecture of complex traits. Many phenotypes of interest (growth, disease susceptibility, etc…) are governed by several locus that have a fairly small individual contribution the phenotype variability. Specific approaches (experimental design and statistic analysis) must beemployed to detect such locus and assess their contribution to the phenotypic variability. The lecture will present the main strategies for Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) detection based on linkage or linkage disequilibrium, and provide examples from the recent literature.

12 February 2013: Collaboration SLRC and ELIXIR.NO

The Norwegian Bioinformatics Platform (www.bioinfo.no) marked the start of the ELIXIR.NO project on February 12th 2013. The University of Bergen coordinates the ELIXIR.NO project that is supported by the Research Council of Norway and five Norwegian universities. An important aim of the project is to build a Norwegian Node in the pan-European research infrastructure for bioinformatics (www.elixir-europe.org). The Norwegian Node will deliver bioinformatics resources to the international research community. These resources will include marine genomics data provision and the development of LiceBase within SLRC will be supported by the project and be one of the first deliverables from the Norwegian Node.

A proposal to establish the Norwegian Node was submitted in 2012 from the University of Bergen and is likely to be approved once an international collaboration agreement for ELIXIR has been signed and ELIXIR has been formally established as an international research infrastructure organization. “LiceBase will be an important resource for genomics research worldwide going far beyond the lice community itself, and we see the possibility for a fruitful collaboration between SLRC and the ELIXIR.NO project going forward,” notes professor Inge Jonassen, head of the ELIXIR.NO project and of the LiceBase work package within SLRC.