Bacterial Genomes III: Comparative Genomics using Artemis Comparison Tool (ACT)

Gain experience in using the Artemis Comparison Tool for comparative genomics

Disease outbreaks are still a big problem in our modern world. Comparison between two or more bacterial genomes can help improve understanding of the causes of pathogenicity and outbreaks of disease caused by bacteria.

On this course you will learn how to use the free Artemis Comparison Tool (ACT). Developed at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, ACT will help you to visualise the comparison of genomes and analyse the results.

This course would benefit those interested in learning how to use tools to investigate and research bacterial genomes, and acquire bioinformatics skills to evaluate the role of microbial genes in disease. Learners will gain experience in comparative genomics, using the Artemis Comparison Tool to probe, visualise and compare genomes, and analyse the results.

This course will be of interest to anyone interested in microbiology, including undergraduates, post-graduates, biomedical researchers, microbiologists, bioinformaticians, teachers, and healthcare professionals.

The opportunity to gain experience in using the Artemis Comparison Tool, a computational tool designed for comparative genomics, will also be of interest to all those who have studied our recommended pre-requisite courses: those with an interest in genomics and disease outbreaks, teachers and their 16-18-year-old science and computing students.

Ideally, you will have completed Bacterial Genomes: From DNA to Protein Function Using Bioinformatics and Bacterial Genomes: Accessing and Analysing Microbial Genome Data before joining the course.

This course will give you an opportunity to learn about and use Artemis Comparison Tool (ACT), a free tool used to display pairwise comparisons between two DNA sequences. To run this software effectively, you will require a computer (Windows, Mac or Linux) with 2GB RAM. The current version of ACT requires version 11 of Java to run successfully. Java 11 can be downloaded from this link. Older versions of ACT require Java 8 to run successfully. Java 8 can be downloaded from this link.

• Introduction to Comparative Genomics and Artemis Comparison Tool (ACT)
• Course Introduction
• Comparative Genomics
• Introduction to ACT
• Working with ACT
• Analysing already available data
• Making your own comparison files
• ACT in real life research scenarios
• Hands on exercise
• Peer-reviewed project
• Introduction
• Whole genome comparison of M. tuberculosis and M. leprae
• Peer review project: Shigella pKSR100 vs E.coli 0157 plasmid
• Assessment, discussion, reflection and acknowledgments
• Acknowledgements