Understand the fundamentals of cancer genomics, including genome organization, mutation types (SNPs, indels, structural variants), and the role of genomics in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and precision medicine. This session sets the stage for your analytical journey.

Learn how to access, navigate, and retrieve cancer genome data from reputable sources such as NCBI and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). You’ll practice identifying relevant datasets and downloading raw sequences in standard formats for analysis.

Delve into preprocessing techniques essential for reliable analysis. You’ll use tools like FastQC and Trimmomatic within Galaxy to assess sequence quality, trim adapters, and clean data—ensuring high-quality input for downstream workflows.

Learn how to assemble short reads into longer, meaningful sequences using Usegalaxy pipelines. You’ll evaluate assembly quality and prepare sequences for annotation and variant analysis, a critical step in handling raw cancer genomic data.

Map your processed cancer genome data to a reference genome using Geneious. You’ll perform gene annotation to identify coding regions and understand the layout of the genome—critical for pinpointing mutations and their locations.

Detect mutations such as SNPs and indels by aligning your sequences and calling variants in either Geneious or Galaxy. You’ll learn how to interpret VCF files and identify mutations relevant to oncogenes, tumor suppressors, or drug resistance markers.

Go beyond detection—predict what your identified mutations mean. Using Geneious, you’ll annotate the functional consequences of variants on gene expression, protein function, and disease progression. This is key to understanding cancer biology at a deeper level.

Learn to manage sample and mutation metadata effectively using Excel and Tableau. You’ll clean, merge, and structure data to prepare for visualization, ensuring your findings are well-organized and reproducible.

Transform complex genomic data into compelling visual insights. With tools like R, Tableau, and ClustVis, you’ll create heatmaps, mutation distribution plots, and summary charts that can communicate your findings to researchers, funders, or employers.

Understand the ethical responsibilities and biosafety guidelines associated with cancer genomic research. Learn about data privacy, responsible data sharing, and the importance of maintaining integrity in clinical and research settings.