Using mobile sequencers in an academic classroom
- Columbia University, United States
Abstract
The advent of mobile DNA sequencers has made it possible to generate DNA sequencing data outside of laboratories and genome centers. Here, we report our experience of using the MinION, a mobile sequencer, in a 13-week academic course for undergraduate and graduate students. The course consisted of theoretical sessions that presented fundamental topics of genomics and several applied hackathon sessions. In these hackathons, the students used MinION sequencers to generate and analyze their own data and gain hands-on experience of the topics discussed in the theoretical classes. The manuscript describes the structure of our class, the educational material, and the lessons we learned in the process. We hope that the knowledge and material presented here will provide the community with useful tools to help educate future generations of genome scientists.
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Ethics
Human subjects: Consent was not necessary because: (a) we used publicly available cell-lines from Coriell that were already consented for sequencing (b) The Common Rule requires consent only for research projects, which are defined (45CFR.46.102d) as "systematic investigation ... designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge". Our sequencing was done as part of training of students and the data was not collected for generalize knowledge.
Copyright
© 2016, Zaaijer & Erlich
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Using mobile sequencers in an academic classroom
eLife 5:e14258.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14258
