ELIXIR Advanced workshops on genome annotation

Genome assembly and genome annotation constitute areas where significant resources, both manpower and computational resources, are needed to come to the successful conclusion of a project. Experience, both organism-specific but also general knowledge of assembly and annotation, is necessary and this is often slowly built up over the years when working continuously on similar projects. Every project is unique, as all organisms are different and variety of different data types and tools exist. There are no golden standards, and the technology is rapidly advancing with new sequence technologies becoming available at a quick pace.

Experience in genome assembly and annotation exists in Europe but it varies between the ELIXIR Nodes, with some already having built up stable infrastructures and others just starting out. However, the need exists in all countries, not least because new sequencing technologies have made genome assembly and annotation more affordable and more feasible even over this past year. Consequently, one of the major goals of EXCELERATE task 10.3 is to build the capacity in genome assembly and annotation where it currently is insufficiently developed.

We report here on the first preparatory workshop for this task, which was held in Uppsala on 19–20 October 2015. Current genome annotation and assembly capacities at the eleven ELIXIR Nodes represented are summarised and a task roadmap is laid out.