Making sense of metagenomics data with MGnify

MGnify is EMBL-EBI’s resource for analysing, discovering and exploring microbiome sequence data. It brings together public datasets and user-submitted data, with analysis workflows suited to different kinds of input. The website allows for browsing studies, samples, sequencing runs, analyses and their results, while downloads and the API support further exploration.

Across this webinar series, we will move from broad community profiles towards increasingly detailed views of microbial sequence data. We will begin with raw metagenomic reads and assemblies, then explore metagenome-assembled genomes and MGnify genome catalogues. We will then continue with a session on MGnify Proteins that will illustrate the large protein sequence space derived from assemblies, and conclude with a session on amplicon sequencing, introducing targeted marker-gene profiling as another way to ask who is present in a community. 

We recommend following the programme in sequence, as each event builds on the one before it. However, it’s important to remember that each data type answers different biological questions.

The webinars making up this series are listed below. Follow the links to find out more about each webinar. You will need to register for each webinar you would like to attend. Recordings will be made openly available for all webinars on their individual pages.

Webinars

Who is this series for?

This series is suitable for life science students, researchers and other learners interested in microbial communities and sequence data. Basic familiarity with DNA sequencing is helpful, but no specialist bioinformatics or coding experience is required to follow the programme.
 

Outcomes

By the end of this webinar series, you will be able to:

• Explain what MGnify offers as a resource for microbiome data analysis, discovery and exploration.
• Distinguish the main data types in the programme: amplicons, raw reads, assemblies, genomes and proteins.
• Describe how MGnify links studies and samples to analyses, visualisations, and downloads.

Speakers

This webinar series will run from 5 November to 16 December 2026. Webinars are free to attend but registration is essential: for all details and registration link, follow the links to the individual webinar pages. 

All webinars will be recorded, and the recording will be made available on given the webinar page. Please note that we do not issue certificates of attendance for our webinars. However, you will receive an email from our Zoom account confirming your participation a day after the event.