Description:

Read alignment or mapping is a computational process to determine where in the reference genome the short RNA reads originated from. This workshop will introduce how to perform read alignment using STAR (Spliced Transcripts Alignment to a Reference), a splice-aware aligner designed to specifically tackle many challenges involved in RNA-seq data mapping. We will introduce STAR’s alignment strategy and interactively work through each step of alignment using an example dataset. We will also discuss how STAR is incorporated in many Nextflow pipelines (for example nf-core/rnaseq).

Prerequisite: This workshop requires a laptop with a terminal application installed and expects familiarity with working from the command line or attendance at the Command Line Introduction workshop.

About the series: This workshop series is designed to cover foundational topics in computational genomics for the research community that uses the Genomics Compute Cluster (GCC) at Northwestern. Most workshops can be attended ad hoc, but some of the content builds on itself from week to week, and most require attendance at the first workshop of the series, Command Line Introduction, so please read the description of each. These workshops will be held in person on the Chicago campus. To participate fully, you will need to bring a laptop with you to each workshop.