The Harvard Catalyst, in collaboration with the Countway Library, the Center for Cancer Computational Biology and the Harvard School of Public Health Bioinformatics Core presents:

Effective use of the NCBI tools and databases

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) presents A Field Guide to GenBank and NCBI Molecular Biology Resources, a lecture and hands-on computer workshop on GenBank and related databases covering effective use of the Entrez molecular biology databases and search service, the BLAST similarity search engine, genome data and related resources.

Topics:
• GenBank Database: description and scope
• The NCBI Derivative Sequence Databases: RefSeqs
• Database Searching using Entrez
• The Discovery system
• Neighboring and Links
• Entrez searching
• The NCBI Structures Database
• The Molecular Modeling Database (MMDB)
• Structural Alignments
• Viewing Structures and Structural Alignments with Cn3D
• Genomic Resources at NCBI
• Complete Microbial Genomes in Entrez
• Higher Genome Resources
• RefSeq and Gene
• HomoloGene
• UniGene
• Variation Data (SNPs)
• The Human, Mouse and Rat genomes
• The Map Viewer
• Other Genomes
• Similarity Searching using NCBI BLAST
• Local Alignment Statistics
• Scoring Systems
• Using BLAST web services
• PSI-BLAST
• Specialized BLAST pages
• Genome-specific BLAST services

Only 1 lecture plus 1 lab session is needed.

Dates:

Day 1 - December 16, 2009
9-Noon lecture (Capacity = 50) and pick one of the following lab sessions
Lab A: 1-3 pm hands-on lab (Capacity = 25)

             or

Lab B: 3-5 pm hands-on lab (Capacity = 25)

OR

Day 2 - December 17, 2009
9-Noon lecture (Capacity = 50) and pick one of the following lab sessions
Lab A: 1-3 pm hands-on lab (Capacity = 25)

             or

Lab B: 3-5 pm hands-on lab (Capacity = 25)

Location:

Lecture sessions will be held at the Tosteson Medical Education Center Room 109; 260 Longwood Ave, Boston (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/about/location-and-directions/)
Lab sessions will be held at the Countway Library of Medicine Room 403; 10 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA (https://www.countway.harvard.edu/menuNavigation/aboutCountway/directions.html

Registration requirements and details:

- Lecture attendance is a prerequisite to the lab session

- $50 (total) event registration fee to cover host administrative costs.  The NCBI does not charge a fee for this training.

Deadline for registration:

December 15, 2009

CONTACT PERSONS:

Harvard School of Public Health:  Leah Segal, lsegal {at} hsph.harvard.edu

Countway Medical Library: David Osterbur, david_osterbur {at} hms.harvard.edu

DFCI Center for Cancer Computational Biology: Joan Coraccio,  joana_coraccio {at} dfci.harvard.edu