EuroFAANG GENE-SWitCH workshop: applications to attend online are open until 25th January!20/12/2022
This one and a half day workshop will provide detailed training on the utilisation of the wealth of data generated by the EuroFAANG GENE-SWitCH project that is delivering new underpinning knowledge for pig and chicken agriculture.
The workshop will primarily focus on the comprehensive and integrated annotation of the chicken and pig genomes by the Ensembl Genome Browser. The course will also include a deeper dive from the Ensembl analysis teams into gene annotation and regulation, and demonstrations of the specific analyses and genomic prediction models generated by GENE-SWitCH researchers. Applications to attend this now virtual event will be accepted up to 25th January, please contact the FAANG Data Coordination Centre. Cooking Up Knowledge From Big Data Using Data Science25/10/2022
Big data keep getting bigger, whether in biology, banking, or marketing, and big data will continue to have a huge impact on our lives. In the coming years, we will need lots of new data scientists who can help make sense of big data with machine-learning methods.
Andrea Rau, researcher of Gene-Switch project at INRAE, explains why Big Data is becoming important in Animal Breeding. We hope you can enjoy reading this interesting article! EuroFAANG GENE-SWitCH workshop: utilisation of GENE-SWitCH data in Ensembl and beyond21/10/2022
This one and a half day workshop will provide detailed training on the utilisation of the wealth of data generated by the EuroFAANG GENE-SWitCH project that is delivering new underpinning knowledge for pig and chicken agriculture.
The workshop will primarily focus on the comprehensive and integrated annotation of the chicken and pig genomes by the Ensembl Genome Browser. The course will also include a deeper dive from the Ensembl analysis teams into gene annotation and regulation, and demonstrations of the specific analyses and genomic prediction models generated by GENE-SWitCH researchers. Applications before Sunday 27th November. WCGALP 2022 – Bitcoin or Genomics: Which brings more?03/08/2022
On the 3rd of July 2022, GENE-SWitCH and GEroNIMO hosted a joint stakeholder event preceding WCGALP titled: “Bitcoins or Genomics: Which brings more?”.
Together with scientists from both projects, we discovered themes like animal breeding, functional annotation, genomics and the challenges in our society. We are delighted to share with you that the recording of this event is now available on our YouTube Channel! WCGALP 2022 – Bitcoin or Genomics: Which brings more?01/06/2022
Every four years, the World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (WCGALP) takes place in a different location throughout the world, and this time it is taking place in the harbour city of Rotterdam (The Netherlands).
We are happy to announce that GENE-SWitCH, alongside GEroNIMO project, will bring up to the event very interesting outputs about animal breeding, functional annotation, genomics, and the challenges in our society. Click here to learn more. GENE-SWitCH First Webinar06/04/2022
We are glad to announce our first GENE-SWitch webinar:
"Feed & Genomics: What's the perfect mix?". During this session, we will dive together into this question with our speakers, on Monday the 9th of May!
Scientific terms for everyone
07/03/2022
In most Horizon 2020 projects, the vocabulary is often very much influenced by scientific terms, specific ways of expressing a situation, impact, or a specific scientific area in general.
For us, it is highly important that people outside the labs and libraries understand what is going on, and what a scientific term means. Scientific terms like “DNA Methylation” are not common for the wider citizens of Europe. We want to change this. We have discovered a series of scientific terms used in our scientific publications, general content, online debates, and discussions. These are words that the European Union also uses when publishing news, legislation, and policy updates from time to time. Over the next 10 weeks, we will explain a series of scientific terms. Explanations will come from a mix of scientists connected to the project with creative animations explaining what the term means and why it is used in relation to EuroFAANG. We hope you will enjoy the videos, share them with your network and learn with us! You are invited02/11/2021
We need your inputs and help!
By sharing views on specific needs and concerns, you can help us define the content of the project and thereby maximise the opportunity to benefit from and apply the project’s outcomes! Join our Knowledge Exchange Platform now! GENE-SWitCH Fact Sheet18/02/2021
We are happy to share that GENE-SWitCH's Fact Sheet is now available in different EU languages. The Fact Sheet describes the projects objectives and impacts in relation to both the EU Green Deal and the SDGs.
GENE-SWitCH will preserve affordability of its products while fostering fair economic returns and reducing the impact on the environment and ecosystems. Understanding the biological blueprint of animals will pave the way for innovative breeding strategies supporting sustainable animal production. Click here to read the GENE-SWitCH Fact Sheet in your preferred language Newsletter - Issue 201/02/2021
The February issue of our newsletter has been published. The focus is on animal breeding, genomics, animal genetics, scientific articles and a lot of more interesting areas.
We hope you will enjoy the newsletter. Feel free to share it amonscientific articles Click here to read the newsletter Don't forget to subscribe to our mailing list if you wish to receive the newsletters of the GENE-SWitCH project in the future. Click here to sign up FAANG to Fork editorial26/11/2020We are happy to announce that, FAANG to Fork editorial has been recently published in Genome Biology. In the editorial, a new set of research priorities have been described to meet present and future challenges to farmed animal production that build on progress, successes and resources from the Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG). Read the editorial here.
Priorities for the next decade of FAANG research
EMABG MSc course is open!19/10/2020
The EMABG is a joint master programme that fulfils a real need for the industry sector and for society as a whole. It is designed to answer the scientific, practical, and societal challenges of animal breeding and genetics.
The new call for the EMABG (starting 2021) has opened and receives applications from students with a background in animal sciences, biology or related fields, who would like to specialise in the field of Animal Breeding and Genetics. Application deadline is 15 January 2021. Check the website for more information. IRTA seeks post-doc researcher14/09/2020
IRTA (the Animal Breeding and Genetics Program) is currently seeking a postdoctoral researcher to participate in studies within the framework of the GENE-SWitCH project regarding:
• The identification of expression QTL (eQTLs) in relevant metabolic porcine tissues using high-throughput genomic sequence data; • Validation of new predictive models (Bayesian and machine learning models) using functional genome annotations (including eQTLs) to increase the accuracy of genomic predictions. Please check here for more information. Post-doc position at Roslin Institute25/08/2020
A postdoc position developing reproducible pipelines and software infrastructure to analyse functional genomics data is available at the Roslin Institute. This position is available as a part of the GENE-SWitCH project. The deadline for the application is 21 September. For more information, please check here.
First Annual Meeting of GENE-SWitCH29/07/2020On July 8-9, GENE-SWitCH held its first Annual Meeting by videoconference, with mornings dedicated to general presentations on project progress by Work Package (WP) and Pillar leaders. The afternoons were dedicated to workshops on specific topics.
Stakeholder Advisory Board recommendations One most interesting aspect of this Annual Meeting was to meet for the first time “in person” (albeit virtually) with some of our Stakeholder Advisory Board members. We received from them very interesting suggestions and useful remarks. Among them, it was recognized that the strong interconnections between Pillars and WPs is a strength of this project, with the recommendation to not underestimate the time and skills required to exploit it at its full potential. They also recommended to disseminate our findings as efficiently as possible, as these are inherently relevant to sustainable development and global changes regarding climate and environment. Moreover, the planned actions to contribute to the education of the younger generation of scientists in the public and livestock industry sectors are of particular relevance. Strength in numbers The clustering with the other EU and international FAANG projects, with the recent establishment of the EUROFAANG node, offers an important change of scale for dissemination and outreach, and as such, a strong opportunity to inspire the public at large about the genomics of FAANG. In conclusion, we had a nice and productive meeting. The project has been advanced well in its initial year, and we expect the first consolidated results about a year from now. Despite the recent activities being coordinated remotely, our Consortium appears to be well connected, and, until now, we encountered only limited delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. GENE-SWitCH's brochure online30/06/2020We are pleased to announce the first GENE-SWitCH brochure is now available on our website! The introductory brochure of the GENE-SWitCH project provides compact information on the project aim, structure, partners, expected outputs and impact.
First Annual Meeting will be held onlineDue to Covid-19 pandemic, GENE-SWitCH project's first annual meeting will be done remotely on 8th and 9th July 2020. More information will be available soon!
GENE-SWitCH's 1st Newsletter is published!20/04/2020We are delighted to announce that the first newsletter of the GENE-SWitCH project is now available!
This very first issue includes news and developments about the project, scientific articles and a closer look at the coordination team of the GENE-SWitCH project. Please click on the image below to enjoy reading our newsletter! Don't forget to subscribe to our mailing list if you wish to receive the newsletters of the GENE-SWitCH project! 
FAANG Shared Workshop: "Foundation for the Future Agenda"02/03/2020FAANG shared workshop was held at the Rosalind Franklin Pavilion, Wellcome Genome Campus Conference Centre, Hinxton, UK on the 25th-27th February 2020.
The aim of the workshop was to establish coordination of plans for cross project (species) comparative analysis, standardised metadata, standardised FAANG analysis workflows/pipelines, planning for future shared dissemination, training and management meetings. An overview of GENE-SWitCH and the core annotation workplan ("GENE-SWitCH project overview, approach to bioinformatics and comparative analysis") was given by Sarah Djebali (INSERM, France). This meeting was an excellent opportunity for cross project networking, with concrete actions such as the establishment of common working groups for bioinformatic pipelines validation and comparative genomics. 
FAANG Europe Workshop15/02/2020The 2nd FAANG-Europe COST Action Conference on Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) took place in Prague, Czech Republic between 11 – 13 February 2020.
Peter Harrison from EMBL-EBI gave a talk about “The FAANG Data Coordination Centre: New European perspectives for our continued global effort” at the conference, representing EMBL-EBI's Data Coordination Centre work on GENE-SWitCH, AQUA-FAANG and BovReg projects. International Plant & Animal Genome Conference XXVIII17/01/2020
The International Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG XXVIII) took place in San Diago, CA, USA between 11-15 January 2020. It is designed to provide a forum on recent developments and future plans for plant and animal genome projects. Consisting of technical presentations, poster sessions, exhibits and workshops, the conference is an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and applications on this internationally important project.
GENE-SWitCH project coordinator Elisabetta Giuffra made a poster presentation (click image on the left) at the conference providing information about the aims, first achievements and perspectives of the GENE-SWitCH project. At the conference, Peter Harrison (EMBL-EBI) presented "The FAANG Data Coordination Centre: New European Perspectives for Our Continued Global Effort", explaining the development of FAANG DCC and FAANG Data Portal. Mick Watson (Roslin Institute) also gave a presentation about "A Vision for Bioinformatics within the Global FAANG Project". Watson presented the development of bioinformatics pipelines across the entire set of FAANG projects, based on the principles of open science, open source code and reproducible workflows and environments. Both presentations are available by clicking on the images below.
GENE-SWitCH at ISAG 2019 |
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31/10/2019
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The 37th International Society for Animal Genetics (ISAG) Conference was held in Lleida, Spain in July 2019. The Conference brought together outstanding scientists, policy makers, professionals and students from interdisciplinary animal genetics fields to share the latest developments, meet old friends and form new partnerships.
At the ISAG conference, Elisabetta Giuffra from INRA presented "Introduction to FAANG (Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes"-Goals and Opportunities". Giuffra mentioned about the Data Coordination Centre and FAANG Data Portal. She presented 3 projects of the FAANG consortium, BovReg, AQUA-FAANG and GENE-SWitCH. Her presentation covered the overall objective, concept and the consortium of GENE-SWitCH, which can be found here. 
GENE-SWitCH project has started!21/10/2019
"The regulatory GENomE of SWine and CHicken: functional annotation during development - GENE-SWitCH" project's fruitful kick-off meeting took place on September 10-11, 2019 in beautiful Paris.
Director of the INRA Animal Genetic Division Edwige Quillet started the opening session of the meeting with the presentation of INRA. Jean-Charles Cavitte from the European Commission took the floor to present GENE-SWitCH and related EU funded research landscape. GENE-SWitCH project coordinator Elisabetta Giuffra talked about the overall project’s aims, concept, ambition, structure and highlighted the connections with the global FAANG initiative. First day of the meeting continued with the presentations on the project's 3 pillars namely "Identification and characterization of functional genomic elements" (Pillar 1), "Implementing FAANG innovation for animal breeding" (Pillar 2) and "Standardization of data and processes, dissemination and outreach" (Pillar 3) and ended with the parallel session discussions on the work packages of the project. Second day of the meeting started with the clustering activities session with the presentations of BovReg and AQUA-FAANG, followed by round table discussions. During the plenary session, work packages of the project were further discussed and the meeting concluded with action points to be completed for the upcoming months. GENE-SWitCH project has started!The Kick-off Meeting of GENE-SWitCH will take place on September 10-11, 2019 in Paris, France!
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The GENE-SWitCH project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No 817998. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. |