Four CenGen staff members (Renée Prins, Lizaan Rademeyer, Kelly Breeds and Elsabet Wessels) and Marizanne Horn (Sensako) were privileged to receive training in population genetics in the comfort of their own laboratory on 29 January 2019.
Since July 2018, Renée has officially been affiliated with the Department of Genetics, Stellenbosch University, and in exchange for assistance with data generation, Dr Aletta van der Merwe and Mr Kelvin Hull presented an introductory lecture on the basic principles of population genetics and how to implement it in the various projects that are running at CenGen. In both our commercial and research projects, we often come across questions on the structure of populations with regards to genetic diversity and parentage.
Aletta and Kelvin explained how to approach such questions and introduced the typical workflow that needs to be applied to get to the answers. They also introduced a selection of population genetics software currently favoured by researchers. They explained how to use these programmes and, most importantly, how to interpret the results.
The lecture will be followed up on in the near future. During their next visit, Aletta and Kelvin will concentrate on the analysis of typical data sets that our team members work with.
