A hundred scientists attended the A Coruña DNA metabarcoding workshop

The workshop, coordinated by AllGenetics, the Universidade da Coruña, and the Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de A Coruña took place last week.

One hundred scientists from eleven different countries attended the A Coruña DNA metabarcoding workshop last week. This event, organised by AllGenetics, the Universidade da Coruña (Evolutionary Biology Group and Centro de Investigacións Científicas Avanzadas), and the Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de A Coruña, took place June 27th – 28th 2018 in the city of A Coruña, Galicia, Spain.

The talks were given by researchers working on different topics related to DNA metabarcoding and metagenomics. Technical aspects such as the preparation of DNA metabarcoding libraries, primer design and optimisation, the “index swapping” phenomenon, and different bioinformatic pipelines for DNA metabarcoding data analysis were discussed. The speakers gave great examples of the use of this technology both in industry and research, such as diet analysis, soil biology and plant ecology studies, biodiversity monitoring, herbal product fraud detection, etc.

Along with the workshop there were social events such as a guided tour of A Coruña city centre and a networking dinner.

As a leading expert in DNA metabarcoding, AllGenetics would like to congratulate the team that organised this great international workshop and we hope to have the chance to continue collaborating with local research institutions in coordinating scientific events in the near future.