Gaurav Arora 1, Vinayak Mathur 2, and Anne Rosenwald 2 1 Gallaudet University, Department of Science, Technology, and Mathematics, Washington, DC Georgetown University, Department of Biology, Washington, DC NextGen Genome Solver Faculty Development in Bioinformatics Bioinformatics is becoming increasingly important for research in all areas of biology. As a result, many current faculty are seeking training opportunities in bioinformatics in order to provide instruction in this area to their students. In 2011, we developed the initial Genome Solver Project, designed to provide training in comparative prokaryotic genomics during workshops held at the J. Craig Venter Institute. More recently, we revised the workshop format so that we now come to your institution, thus helping to develop local networks of expertise. We invite those who are interested to join in our associated community science project, to explore the presence of bacteriophage genes in bacterial genomes. ABSTRACT Genome Solver is supported by DUE WORKSHOPS Topics Covered Genomics and the Human Microbiome Project Prokaryotic Sequence Databases Local and Global Sequence Alignments Pairwise and Multiple Sequence Alignments Phylogenetics Software Tools Used Integrated Microbial Genomes Database BLAST (NCBI) MUSCLE (EBI) MEGA ( Format: Didactic lectures alternate with hands-on practice of tools with plenty of time for conversation and sharing. COMMUNITY SCIENCE PROJECT Horizontal Gene Transfer Between Phage and Bacteria Overarching question: To what extent does exchange of genetic material between phages and bacteria drive bacterial evolution? Approach: Identify Phage Orthologous Genes (POGs) in bacteria using BLAST and other homology search tools. Data Collection: Faculty and students report phage/bacterial gene pairs to a central database to be housed at Genome Solver ( Project 2: Phage phiHP33 homologs in 335 strains of Helicobacter pylori Presence of POGs in strains correlates with 2 known virulence factors Kyrillos et al. “The Presence of phage orthologous genes in Helicobacter pylori correlates with the presence of the virulence factors CagA and VacA” Helicobacter (in press [doi: /hel.12282]) Figure created with BioVenn ( Project 3: Phage tape measure proteins Different tape measure proteins are shared among bacteria and phage to different extents Nguyen, Arora, Mathur, and Rosenwald (in preparation) Figure dreated with Gephi ( Project 1: PRIP from Chlamydia phage is found in C. pneumoniae Rosenwald et al. (2014) “Evidence for horizontal gene transfer between Chlamydia phage and Chlamydophila pneumoniae” Bacteriophage 4: e The goal of the Genome Solver Project is to teach faculty basic bioinformatics skills that they can use with their students. In the first iteration of the project, 2-day workshops for faculty were held at the J. Craig Venter Institute ( ). Recently, we embarked on a new format, which we have named “Genome Solver On-the-Go” in which we deliver content in two 3-hour units. We report here on our first two “On-the-Go” experiences (see Table 1) and describe our new companion community science project. INTRODUCTION Project 4: Major capsid protein VP1 Microviridae species from a French bog have VP1 homologs in a variety of bacteria Genomics and Bioinformatics Class, Fall 2015 (in preparation) Project 5: Phage genes in Y. pestis Phage genes differ among medieval and modern strains Hughes, Mathur, Arora, and Rosenwald (in prepration) Interested in having a workshop at your location? Contact Anne Rosenwald or Gaurav Arora