We learned about many kinds of annotation projects. Charles Hardnet from Spelman College showed electron micrographs of the phage that his students isolated and annotated through their school’s partnership with HHMI. For the bacterial projects, Derek Wood, Brad Goodner, Daniel Rhoades, and Steve Slater from colleges across the US described a joint endeavor where students carried out functional annotation by using bacterial mutants to test whether genes can correct deficiencies in nutritional pathways. Cheryl Kerfeld from the Joint Genome Institute discussed a program where 65 bacterial and archaeal genomes can be adopted and annotated by college classes. Representing insects, Sarah Elgin of Washington University discussed a national partnership where students assemble and annotate genes from different species of Drosophila.
More on the iPlant Genomics Education conference at GenomeWeb.