Anreise und Übernachtung schon am Montag 10.02.2025
Workshop1:
Dung-dwelling Protists
Tristan Henderson
Mississippi State University, U.S.A.
The evolutionary transition from aquatic to terrestrial environments marks a pivotal event in Earth’s history, enabling organisms to exploit new niches and driving the emergence of novel adaptive strategies. As multicellular organisms like plants and animals adapted to terrestrial environments, they created or became novel microhabitats for microbes. One fascinating and largely underexplored microhabitat is dung.
Dung is a rather unique microhabitat to evolve to. Its timing, placing, and very composition depends on the animal and their diet. Dung is considered “ephemeral” meaning it has a short window of bioactivity, much like carrion or rotten fruit, yet in many cases it supports a diverse and rich community of organisms. From butterflies to beetles, and bacteria to protists, this workshop will briefly cover what is known about the ecology and growing prevalence of dung, with a focus on domesticated ruminants (cattle and horses). In a modern context, cow dung is particularly interesting due to the global expansion of cattle farms on deforested areas, and thus the spread of dung-specific organisms.
While we will cover the overall protist diversity found in dung environments, a major theme in this workshop is collective behavior. Three protists from herbivore dung exhibit a “social” life cycle similar to dictyostelids, but are phylogenetically distant, belonging to different supergroups (Copromyxa protea [Amoebozoa], Sorodiplophrys stercorea [Stramenopiles], and Guttulinopsis vulgaris [Rhizaria]). Another protist, Sappinia pedata (Amoebozoa), has been observed displaying aggregative behavior on dung but it has not been investigated. We will use insights from studying these four species to learn methods of researching dung-dwelling protists overall.
In this workshop we will cover:
– Evolution, ecology, and growing prevalence of dung
– [potentially] Parasites related to cattle and dung
– Diversity of protists inhabiting dung and their unique behaviors
– How to find, isolate, and culture several protists from dung
– Current methods to study dung-dwelling protist behavior
Workshop2:
Analyses of barcoding and metabarcoding amplicon sequencing datasets
Guillaume Lentendu
University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
https://www.unine.ch/biolsol/home/collaborators/Guillaume_Lentendu-1.html
High-throughput sequencing has become the standard in biodiversity, ecology and phylogenomics research, but most researchers lack a comprehensive overview of these different approaches as well as the bioinformatic requirements and databases availability to process such datasets. This workshop intends to shed light on some of these high-throughput sequencing techniques (Illumina, PacBio, Nanopore), their benefit, cost, ease of application and bioinformatic processing.
The workshop will include hands-on sessions in which we will analyse a metabarcoding dataset from Illumina MiSeq, but other type of datasets (e.g. Nanopore, PacBio) could be investigated too depending on the demand (please vote at registration). We will test different tools for sequence manipulation, sequence quality reporting, primer and barcodes removing, denoising, clustering and taxonomic annotation. I will cover the common issues and how to solve them: low quality at the end of reads, error model-based correction of raw reads, cross-contamination (tag jumping), general contamination, sequencing depth bias. I will stress the need for positive controls (e.g. MOCK communities) and negative controls at DNA extraction, PCR and sequencing steps. The workshop will also provide hands-on experience with a high-performance computer (HPC).
A minimum knowledge of bash and R scripting would help to the good conduction of this workshop. Introduction lectures and tutorials can be found here and there for bash, and here and there for R.
Computers with all needed software will be provided.
No support to install software on personal computers will be provided.
– Lateniumthe largest archaeological museum in Switzerland
Located on the shores of Lake Neuchâtel, the museum and its archaeological park tell you about 500 centuries of regional history, from the Middle Palaeolithic to Modern Times.
Museum dedicated to one of Switzerland’s major writers right next to the wonderful botanical garden of Neuchâtel. Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–90), the world-renowned writer and playwright, was also an avid painter and illustrator his whole life. The
Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (CDN) showcases his paintings as they relate to his literary works in a permanent exhibition. The museum also stages temporary exhibitions and events, and offers guided tours, workshops for schools, publications, a podcast and virtual tours. Designed by Mario Botta around Dürrenmatt’s former home, the CDN showcases parts of the writer and painter’s living space.
How the World’s most precise atomic clocks are produced and what this means for our everyday life. The Time and Frequency Laboratory constitutes one of the nine key areas of research and innovation of the University of Neuchâtel. The Time-Frequency and Optical Metrology Centre explores and pushes the frontiers in time measurements, photonics, and metrology and participate to the international efforts to define the international atomic time TAI with primary frequency standards, with the development of the unique atomic fountain clock FOCS-2 that operates with a continuous beam of cold cesium atoms.
– 1000 years of history, castle and collégiale (cathedral) and more
Millennial city with lots of charm, Neuchâtel will enchant you with its elegant yellow-ochre buildings and its privileged location at the largest entirely Swiss lake.