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• “mRNAseq for ‘Semimodel’ Organisms” — Two-day, hands-on workshop will introduce biologists to doing reference-based transcriptome analysis with TopHat, Cufflinks and DAVID.

The primary focus will be on “semimodel” organisms — organisms with good quality reference genomes but relatively incomplete gene annotations. This includes most animals and plants that are not major model organisms. The workshop will be eukaryote-focused (large genomes, and genes with introns).

Titus Brown is the lead instructor for the workshop, scheduled from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, March 4-5, in Valley Hall.

The workshop is open to everyone, including graduate students, postdocs, staff, faculty and community members. Space reserved for School of Veterinary Medicine affiliates, . Others should use the registration link on this .

• Biorepositories Initiative Conference — "Implementing a Biospecimen Management System at UC ����ԭ��: Developing an Integrated Research Infrastructure,” introducing the UC ����ԭ�� Biorepositories Initiative.

Open to all faculty and staff from both the Sacramento and ����ԭ�� campuses who would like to express their ideas, needs and priorities involving human biospecimens. In particular, the conference is directed toward faculty and staff who:

• Need to obtain biospecimens for their research
• Currently collect biospecimens for research
• Are stakeholders in an established biorepository
• Want to know more about the use of human biospecimens
• Have questions, suggestions or comments about biospecimen management at UC ����ԭ��

The initiative is meant to define a strategy for developing, implementing and sustaining a research infrastructure to facilitate resourceful biospecimen management in support of high-quality biomedical research, enhance internal and external collaborations, and seamlessly connect with other university initiatives.

The conference speakers: Nicholas Anderson, director, Informatics Research, and the Robert D. Cardiff Professor of Informatics; and Stephanie Soares, program manager, Biorepositories Initiative.

The conference is scheduled from 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 11, in the auditorium of the Comprehensive Cancer Center on the Sacramento campus. A continental breakfast will be provided. RSVPs are requested by Friday (Feb. 27) and may be arranged or by sending an email to Stephanie Soares.