We get a lot of questions about our service and tools. We have listed below the answers to the most common ones. If your question is not listed here and you feel that you would benefit from reaching out to a bioinformatics specialist, please use our Open Door  form to submit a message to our team. You could also reach us through our Contact Us form. 

We are frequent contributors to CBW workshops and  McGill Initiative in Computational Medicine,  MiCM training events. We also periodically organize training events of our own, so please subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on twitter and follow our blog to stay informed. Customized training is also often offered as a service, so contact us today at services@c3g.ca to learn more about possibilities. Our weekly open door sessions are also a great opportunity to learn about simple bioinformatics tasks.

There is hardly a one-size fits-all answer to this question, since the required sample size is a function of the target statistical power, target false-positive rate and the structure of the experimental noise. Contact us at services@c3g.ca to discuss this topic in more detail. While there are some rules of thumb, proper determination of sample sizes requires actual calculations based on pilot (or similar) data or assumptions on parameter values. For omics assays, these calculations are often non-trivial and require time and expertise.

Technical replication (sequencing library repeat, cell line repeat, same patient sample repeat, etc.) is important in some cases but in general, they are nice to have without being ultimately useful. If you want to make inferences about effects on a given population (e.g. of patients), then it is the number of independent samples on that population that really counts.

We are here to answer your questions. We are able to provide insight regarding your bioinformatics needs, whether your questions are more computational in nature or whether they are regarding structuring your experiment to maximize the power and strength of your analysis. We are here for you! Join our Open Door meeting 

Visit our Services page to learn more about our prices.