Meals & Accommodations at the Queen's University Biological Station - Opinicon Campus - are included in the registration fee. We can provide transportation from Kingston. If participants are driving themselves (directions), parking is available. Before arriving we will refer you to some video and PDF resources including a video introduction to eDNA that you should view before arriving.
| DATE | TIME | ACTIVITY |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday, July 12 | Late afternoon | Arrival at QUBS |
| 5:30-6:30 PM | Dinner | |
| 7:00-8:00 PM | Roundtable: Welcome to QUBS - Introductions, Questions on eDNA | |
| Monday, July 13 | 7:30-8:30 AM | Breakfast |
| Field Work Day | 9:00-10:15 AM | Lecture 1: Introduction to eDNA study design |
| 10:15-10:30 AM | Break | |
| 10:30 AM-noon | Lecture 2: Overview of Fieldwork: Sampling, Metadata, Filtration | |
| 12:00-1:00 PM | Lunch | |
| 1:00-4:00 PM | Field practicum: Sampling water + metadata collection + water filtration + hotshot extraction | |
| 4:00-4:30 | Break | |
| 4:30-5:30 PM | Lecture 3: Introduction to eDNA Extraction | |
| 5:30-7 PM | Dinner | |
| 7:00-8:00 PM | Lecture 4: Introduction to single species assays, qPCR and ddPCR | |
| Tuesday, July 14 | 7:30-8:30 AM | Breakfast |
| Single Species Assay Day | 8:30 AM - Noon | Practicum: DNA extraction - TissueLyser and QiaCUBE Platform |
| Noon-1:00 PM | Lunch | |
| 1:00-3:30 PM | Demo: Bio-RAD qPCR Demonstration Part 1 | |
| 3:30-3:45 PM | Break | |
| 3:45-5:00 PM | Demo: Bio-RAD qPCR Demonstration Part 2 | |
| 5:00-7:00 PM | Break and Dinner | |
| 7:00-8:00 PM | Lecture 5: Data analysis and single species detection recap, Q&A | |
| Wednesday, July 15 | 7:30-8:00 AM | Breakfast |
| Multi Species Assay Day | 8:00-9:30 AM | Lecture 6: Broad overview of metabarcoding |
| 9:30-9:45 AM | Break | |
| 9:45 AM-noon | Practicum. Polymerase chain reaction with MiFish primers | |
| noon-1:00 PM | Lunch | |
| 1-2:30 PM | Lecture 7: Library Prep and DNA metabarcoding workflow specifics | |
| 2:30-3:00 PM | Break | |
| 4:00-5:30 PM | Practicum: DNA visualization: gels, gel excision, Nanodrop/Qubit | |
| 5:30-7:00 PM | Dinner | |
| 7:00-8:00 PM | Wednesday Seminar by Georgia Thomson Laing (Cawthron University, NZ): Exploring sedimentary DNA from Aotearoa, New Zealand lake sediment cores. Part of the QUBS seminar series | |
| Thursday, July 16 | 7:30-8:30 AM | Breakfast |
| Bioinformatics Day | 8:30-10:00 AM | Lecture 8: Introduction to eDNA metabarcoding bioinformatics |
| 10:00-10:30 AM | Break | |
| 10:30 AM-noon | Practicum: Command line and getting into BASH (short for "Bourne Again SHell")) | |
| noon-1:00 PM | Lunch | |
| 1:00-2:45 PM | Practicum: Bioinformatics analysis & interpretation of metabarcoding results. Part 1 | |
| 2:45-3:00 PM | Break | |
| 3:00-4:30 PM | Practicum: Bioinformatics analysis & interpretation of metabarcoding results. Part 2 | |
| 4:30-5:30 PM | Guest Speaker: Dr. Bob Hanner. University of Guelph | |
| 5:30-6:30 PM | Dinner | |
| 7:00-8:00 PM | Round Table: with Guest Speakers and general Q&A | |
| 8:00-9:00 PM | Workshop quiz and debrief | |
| Friday, July 17 | 7:30-9:30 AM | Breakfast |
| 9:30-10:30 AM | General Q&A | |
| 10:30-12:00 PM | Drive participants | |
| 12:00-1:00 PM | Lunch | |
| 1:00-4:00 PM | Depart. Drive participants who require rides to their destinations |