A workshop was organised by Institute for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (IBER) on July 18, 2022 at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). The in-house workshop was delivered by two Visiting researchers from the Singhealth Duke-NUS Institute of Biodiversity Medicine (BD-MED) in Singapore, Cedric Ng and Abner Lim. The researchers from BD-MED had previously sequenced and published the world’s first draft genome of tropical durian.
The workshop was entitled ‘Genomic Applications in Biodiversity Conservation’, and was attended by the staff and students of UBD. This workshop provided an introduction to the next generation sequencing and its applications, and gave an opportunity for participants to have a hands-on exposure on Nanopore sequencing.
According to the BD-MED facilitators, genetic approaches have a long history of use in conservation. In the genomics era, the rapid development of genomic sequencing technology, its accuracy and throughput have accelerated genomic research and broadened our understanding of ecologies such as species delineation, evolutionary trajectories, and genomic inbreeding patterns.
The BD-MED speakers also shared how genomic information can be used in research and subsequently be applied to make informed decision, solve problems and mitigate our impact on the earth’s biota. This workshop is timely as IBER is currently exploring biodiversity genomics research as part of the new initiatives in IBER.
Text by: Dr Hussein Taha
Photos by: IBER