News

Prof. Helena Kääriäinen Title: "Genetic counselling for everybody?" Time: 5.12.2016 at 10.15 Place: Riia 23 room 217 Genetic testing came to the clinic around the change of the century. It started from testing known mutations in a few rare diseases, developed to sequencing whole genes relating to a growing number of rare diseases and, today, the clinical routine is to sequence some tens of genes, gene panels, to find the cause of a certain phenotype.

The first Guest Seminar of the Centre of Excellence for Genomics and Translational Medicine by Dr. Pauline Crystal Ng, Genome Institute of Singapore Time: December 6, 2016, at 14:15, room 105, Omicum building Title: "Accessible Science" Abstract: My goal is to make science accessible to new audiences. I use bioinformatics to bridge the gap between science and users. For example, 15 years ago, I created SIFT, an algorithm to bridge computational biology and human genetics.

The first Big Seminar of the CoE for Genomics and Translational Medicine will be held on September 30, 2016 at 12:15 in room 105 (Omicum). Prof. Andres Metspalu from the Estonian Genome Centre, University of Tartu, will give a talk: “From Biobanking to Personalized Medicine”. Abstract:

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a complex disease which affects about eight percent of the world’s adult population. Researchers of the Estonian Genome Center of the University of Tartu came up with a novel and more efficient methodology for evaluating the genetic risk of developing T2D.

The “RNA-sequencing and eQTL analysis” workshop will be held by scientists from the University medical center Gröningen (The Netherlands) in the Institute of Molecular and Cell biology University of Tartu (Riia 23-217) at 24. August. The workshop is free of charge. For the practical course in afternoon, please register Program 9.30- General introduction to eQTL and ASE analyses.

Special training for medical community will follow after the Geneforum - 11.06.2016 (Dorpat Conference Center, Soola 6, Tartu, Estonia). Participation is free of charge, but pre-registration is required. Deadline for the registration is June 5th.

June 9-10, 2016, in Tartu, Estonia An annual international high-level scientific conference on genetics and genomics, the major event in the Baltics, provides an excellent opportunity to establish and renew contacts in the region. Due to its interdisciplinary scope, the conference brings together 17-18 distinguished experts from Europe and US for discussion of the progress in the field.

Guest seminar by Dr. Peter Joshi and Dr. Jim Wilson, University of Edinburgh, Centre for Population Health Sciences, Population and Disease Genetics Group Time: Monday, May 23, 2016, at 13:00

Prof. Jaakko Kaprio: “Genomic epidemiology of nicotine dependence”

Tartu, Estonia, Fri 17th - Wed 22nd June 2016

UT was successful in the call for proposals for centres of excellence in research: Archimedes Foundation made the proposal to fund three centres of excellence which are led by UT researchers. In addition, UT participates as a partner in all other centres of excellence which were successful in this call for proposals.

CCHT has been preparing a Personalised Medicine project since last year, in the framework of the Competence Centre programme supported via Enterprise Estonia. The project focuses on the development of applications using integrated genome- and other health data. The consortium members are Competence Centre on Health Technologies (Estonia), University of Tartu Estonian Genome Center (Estonia), Tallinn University of Technology e-Medicine Laboratory (Estonia), BioEximi OÜ (Estonia), Duodecim Medical Publications Ltd. (Finland), Medisapiens Ltd.

NATURE | Alison Abbott & Quirin Schiermeier After the Berlin Wall: Central Europe up close In the 25 years since the collapse of communism, the countries of central and Eastern Europe have each carved their own identity in science.

The country’s genetic biobank is still in its earliest stages, but the government hopes to one day have enough donors to totally overhaul its health-care system.

The 3rd BBMRI-LPC Workshop “Biobanks, data and access” 26th-28th of August 2015, Tartu, Estonia.

Registration has now ended. This year we have had a huge interest towards the workshop. Although we couldn’t welcome all the applications, we accepted more participants as ever – we are now waiting 36 people from 13 different countries – Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Tartu, Estonia, and Lyon, France, June 18th, 2015 On the occasion of the Gene Forum held today and tomorrow in Tartu, Estonia (www.geneforum.ee), Charles Auffray, the President and Founding Director of the European Institute for Systems Biology and Medicine (EISBM) in Lyon, France and Andres Metspalu, the Director of the Estonian Genome Centre and Biobank at the University of Tartu, Estonia, are going to review the recent developments of the Vistera Project discussed at the Bioforum last w

Professor Heribert Schunkert, Director of the National Centre of Cardiovascular Research will give a lecture at the OMICUM’s lecture hall (105) on June 12th at 10:00

On 23 and 24 April, the UT Centre of Gene and Biotechnology hosts ten European top specialists in reproductive health of men and women. They will speak about intrauterine and early childhood determinants of the child’s health, the link between pregnancy disorders and the mother’s health later in life and how the environment and hormones affect the fertility of the baby, to name only some topics.

This year’s meeting is hosted by the Estonian Genome Center, the training center for the founders of new biobanks and large sample collections. The first workshop “Practical Biobanking” held in Tartu in 2013, brought together enthusiasts from different countries, most of them from the Eastern Europe.