Training
The Shared Research Facilities run training courses throughout the year. These courses combine bioinformatics practical sessions with lectures to familiarise participants with the both the theory and practice behind various techniques.
An Introduction to Omics
Upcoming Dates
10 - 12th December 2025: Room 248 "Gannochy", Wolfson Medical School Building.
22 - 24th April 2026
9 - 11th September 2026
9 - 11th December 2026
Future locations TBC.
Speakers
David McGuinness, Gavin Blackburn, Ronan Daly
Description
A course held over three days, aimed at familiarising participants with the basis and application of various omics disciplines: genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and bioinformatics. Each of the omics disciplines will be covered by a lecture and a practical bioinformatics session. By the end of the course users should understand, for each omics level: the basis of the discipline, the instrumentation used to generate high-throughput biological data, key applications, and how to visualise the resulting data using commonly used software packages. Participants will also be aware of how different large-scale data sets can be integrated in order to obtain better biological inference, and appreciate the nature of other modern challenges in bioinformatics.
Course fee
£340
Cancellation policy
A refund will be issued if a booking is cancelled more than one week prior to the workshop.
Target group
Research students and staff who wish to deepen their understanding of high throughput data generation and analysis.
Local Organiser
Rachael Munro, MVLS Shared Research Facilities
Registration and enquiries
Please provide a budget centre or PO number for the course fee and state which course you would like to register for.
Bioinformatics for Biologists
What is the format, when does it run?
The programme is self paced - you watch lectures in your own time and can begin tutorials on your own. However, the tutorials are supported every week via zoom drop-in clinics. At these, all day, weekly clinics there will be a team of demonstrators and bioinformaticians, who will answer any questions and support you with the tutorials. These run every Friday, 9:30am - 12:30pm & 1:30pm - 4:30pm on Zoom. You can use this in one of two ways:
- Structured: Aim to complete two teaching sessions a week by setting Fridays aside. Come to the clinic on a Friday and complete your first session in the morning and the second in the afternoon, whilst on the zoom. This way, if you get stuck we are immediately there to help.
- Unstructured: Work at your own pace throughout the week, and only come to drop-in clinic if you have specific questions or are stuck.
Description
Bioinformatics for Biologists is aimed at wet-lab biologists who have little or no previous experience of R or omics. It is 100% entry level - for beginners. It is highly practical and aims to equip wet-lab scientists with the skills and confidence to perform their own bioinformatic data analysis, for any dataset. The course is comprehensive, yet gently paced. The full programme is broken down into five courses. By registering you automatically get access to all five courses, via a central Moodle site. Each course is roughly 1 week in length, and includes lectures, lecture recordings, easy to follow workbooks and cheat code.
- Omic data analysis and visualisation using R
- Further omics, statistics and clinical data in R
- Single cell and spatial bioinformatics
- Essential command line bioinformatics and genomics
- Metagenomics
Course fee
£695
Target Group
Research students and staff who wish to deepen their understanding of high throughput data generation and analysis.
Local Organiser
John Cole, MVLS Shared Reseach Facilities
Registration and enquiries
Please register here: https://forms.office.com/r/yu0jhVi426
Image and Flow Data Analysis Workshops
Dates
25 - 29 August 2025
Modules and Times
Day 1
Introduction to Fluorescence 10.00 – 11.00
Fiji and image data 13.00 – 15h30
Day 2
CellProfiler 10.00 – 12.30
Day 3
QuPath 10.00 – 12.30
Day 4
Flow data analysis 10.00 – 12.30
Day 5
Nikon NIS software hands-on 09.30 - 10.30
Bring your own data 10.30 – 12.00
Trainers
Leandro Lembgruber Soares, Hannah Scales, Tyler Shaw, Anthony Dornan
Course Fee
£50 per module or £150 for all
Cancellation policy
A refund will be issued if a booking is cancelled more than one week prior to the workshop.
Local Organiser
Rachael Munro, MVLS Shared Research Facilities
Registration and enquiries
Please provide a budget centre or PO number for the course fee and state which course you would like to register for.
Metabolomics Data Analysis Workshop
Metabolomics experiments can provide a wealth of information and answers to complex biological questions. The key to getting the best out of these experiments is an understanding of how the instruments used to analyse these samples work and how this information is used to develop the most appropriate analytical pipeline for your study. This course will provide an introduction to metabolomics data analysis, using the shared research facilities online data processing tool, focussed on interpreting the data using both biology and appropriate statistics, how study design can affect the outcome of the analysis, and how to include meta-data analysis to provide a complete picture of your data.
Intended learning outcomes:
- To investigate the varied possibilities of metabolomics
- To learn the principals of data analysis in metabolomics
- To appreciate the checks and controls required to design a good metabolomics analysis pipeline across different software tools
- Statistical concepts in metabolomics
- To gain an understanding of what evidence is required to identify a metabolite in metabolomics
- To understand how to use prior knowledge in your system as well as biochemistry to interpret your data set
Protein Production and Purification Workshop
Upcoming Dates
1 - 4th December 2025
2 - 5th March 2026
1 - 4th June 2026
12 - 15th October 2026
Venue
Joseph Black Building, University of Glasgow
Trainer
Susan Kitson, Mads Gabrielsen
Description
In this hands-on workshop, you will work on the expression and purification of a protein in E. coli. As part of the course we will help to inform you of construct design to enhance the chances of a successful purification and learning about strategies for protein overexpression in a bacterial system. You will acquire an understanding of the fundamental principles of various chromatography techniques and gain practical experience using AKTA systems for chromatography. Finally, you will purify the protein and use techniques as SDS-PAGE and spectrophotometry to analyse the protein and measure its yield.
Day 1
· Introduction to protein production tutorial.
· Practical- making agar plates, transforming plasmid into bacteria and plating.
· Introduction to Protein Purification techniques, affinity, desalting, HIC, AIEX and SEC.
Day 2
· How to measure and assess protein.
· Practical-picking colonies and setting up a 10 mL test expression.
· Practical- Make buffers for purification and getting to know the AKTA system.
Day 3
· Practical – Perform test expression of uninduced and induced samples to examine on an SDS-PAGE gel.
· Practical – Lyse a pre-expressed pellet by French Press then perform affinity chromatography on the AKTA.
· Assess samples after affinity chromatography.
Day 4
· Pool fraction samples together for Desalting column.
· Final assessment of all purification steps.
Target Group
Those working on a MSc, PhD or post-doctoral research project that involves protein production. Technicians and technical specialists who would like to gain more of an understanding of this area, and who wants to expand or solidify their skill base. Anyone who would like to add these skills to their repertoire.
Course Fee
£700
Registration and enquiries
Please be aware that as this is hands-on practical workshop spaces are very limited.
Please provide a budget centre or PO number for the course fee and state which course you would like to register for.