The Bioinformatics Pipeline and Visualization Working Group of the Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) has continued to host bi-monthly meetings to discuss critical challenges in the field of public health bioinformatics, highlight valuable resources and open-source software that address such challenges, and freely discuss working-group members’ current projects and scientific pursuits to foster open communication and collaboration amongst members.
In the past few months, meeting highlights have included
- Ongoing conversations regarding the challenges of SARS-CoV-2 data submission to the various internationally-accessible databases such as GISAID, NCBI, and ENA,
- Presentations by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Technical Outreach and Assistance for States Team (CDC TOAST) outlining their approach to providing SARS-CoV-2 bioinformatics support for US states and territories,
- A presentation by UCSC UShER developers detailing the utility of rapid phylogenetic placement in the context of SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and surveillance investigations,
- Various discussions and presentations about the dynamic nature of SARS-CoV-2 lineage nomenclature, and
- Multiple Happy Hour discussions during which working group members have had opportunities to discuss their current projects and general scientific pursuits to seek feedback from leaders in the field and encourage collaborative work
Outside of the bi-monthly meetings, the working group has continued work in creating, maintaining, and distributing guidance documents and resources that address common challenges regarding the integration and application of bioinformatics solutions that support global COVID-19 response efforts. These resources have been made publicly available through a PHA4GE hosted Github repository: https://github.com/pha4ge/pipeline-resources.
by Kevin Libuit, on behalf of the Bioinformatics Pipelines and Visualization Working Group
