CRISPR Screen Analysis
for Absolute Beginners
A live, hands-on workshop for bench scientists who’d rather not face the terminal alone. We set up your own laptop together, run a real published screen step by step with you asking as you go, and then sit down one-on-one with your own screen data.
The recorded course works.
Unless you’re stuck at step one.
Most people can follow a recorded course on their own. Some would rather not — and the reasons are almost always the same four.
The terminal makes you nervous
A black window that only accepts typing, and one wrong character away from an error you can’t read. Plenty of excellent scientists have never opened one, and would rather the first time be with someone beside them.
The install fails, and there’s nobody to ask
Installing Linux on Windows usually goes fine. When it doesn’t, it fails on a message that means nothing to you — and that’s where most people quietly give up. Here, we fix it together, on your machine.
You need to ask “why?” in the moment
Why normalize to the median? Why is this guide a jackpot and not a hit? A video can’t hear the question. In the live session you ask it as it comes up, and I answer it right then.
It’s your own screen you actually care about
The example is a means to an end. What you want is your own data analyzed correctly, and someone experienced to look at the quality numbers and the hits with you. That’s the 1:1.
Before, during,
and after the session.
One price covers all of it. You arrive having seen the analysis once, you run it with me live, and you leave with your own screen analyzed.
On enrolment — the recorded course is yours
The whole recorded course is handed over when you enrol: the video, the slides, the handout, the workbook and the pipeline. Watch it beforehand so the live session is your second look at the analysis, not your first. A short intake form tells me about your screen, so I can say straight away whether it’s ready for the 1:1, and what to prepare if it isn’t.
The live session — set up, then run it together
We set up your own laptop together: Linux, the tools, the project folder, until everything works on your machine. Then we run the course’s published screen step by step — the reads, counting, the quality checks, normalization, the statistics, the hits — and you stop me whenever something doesn’t make sense.
Afterwards — your private 1:1
Just you and me, on your own screen. We set up the pipeline’s three small text files for your experiment, run it, and read the results together: did the screen work, which comparison answers your question, which hits you’d take to the bench.
A real screen, from raw reads
to the genes worth validating.
The same analysis as the recorded course, on the same published screen: a genome-wide Brunello knockout screen for resistance to the leukemia drug venetoclax (Nechiporuk et al., Cancer Discovery 2019, GEO GSE130413).
Linux on your own laptop, working before we move on
Windows: real Linux from the Microsoft Store. Mac: a better terminal and Homebrew. The handful of commands the analysis needs, how to read any command you meet, and one script that installs and tests MAGeCK, seqkit and R.
Every step, with its input, command, statistics and output
Why every guide is a twenty-letter barcode. Inside a read. Counting. The four numbers that tell you the screen worked. The normalization trap that turns 103 dropouts into 7,274. How MAGeCK ranks genes. Whether the essential genes dropped out. Jackpots, and how candidates get picked.
Three text files, two commands, every figure
The ready-to-use pipeline: describe your experiment in three small files, run the MAGeCK workflow with one command and every figure with another. This is what we point at your own screen in the 1:1.
This is the short version. The recorded course page has the full curriculum, part by part with runtimes, and a free ten-minute walkthrough on the real slides. You get all of it when you enrol.
See everything that’s covered →
“But will this work on my screen?”
It’s the question that keeps screens sitting in folders. So the workshop ends with the answer: you and me, one-on-one, running the pipeline on your own data. Not a demo. Your guides, your samples, your hits.
One honest limit, so nobody is surprised. This is for pooled screens read out by guide counts. Arrayed screens and single-cell CRISPR screens are different analyses. Tell me at intake and I’ll say so before you pay.
Everything you need,
nothing you don’t.
One enrolment — $597 per seat — covers all of it.
A live, hands-on session with meYour questions answered as you hit them
Your laptop set up with youLinux and every tool working on your own machine
A private 1:1 on your own screenWe run the pipeline on your data together
The recorded course, included2 h 35 m of video, handed over on enrolment
The pipeline for your own screensYours to keep and reuse on every screen after this one
Slides, handout and practice workbookEvery command and every tool link, to keep
Dr. Lei Guo
Computational biologist · Founder, NGS101.com
A computational biologist with more than a decade analysing next-generation sequencing data, and a wet-lab researcher before that — studying sex determination in turtles when his first sequencing data came back and nobody in the department could analyze it, including him.
He has since trained individual researchers, whole labs and entire departments, most of them wet-lab scientists who had never opened a terminal. His teaching runs on two rules: fire before aim — real data from the first step, understanding as you go — and lean learning: exactly what the analysis needs, and nothing more.
And no step is too small to explain.
Questions people ask
before they join.
If yours isn’t here, there’s an address at the bottom.
When is it, and what time of day?
The date isn’t fixed yet; it will be in 2027. The waitlist is emailed first, before it’s announced anywhere else, and that email carries the date, the time and how to enrol.
Joining the waitlist costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
I’ve never opened a terminal. Is this really for me?
It’s built for exactly that. There are no prerequisites, and the setup happens live, on your own laptop, with me there when something goes wrong. If the recorded course is “follow along on your own”, this is “do it together”.
Do I need my own screen data?
No. The live session runs on the course’s published screen, so everyone learns the whole analysis whether or not their own data exists yet. If you don’t have data by the 1:1, use it to plan your screen instead: replicates, reads per guide, what to ask your core for. What to bring is above.
I already bought the recorded course. Do I pay twice?
No. The full $297 comes off the workshop, so you pay $300 — the same $597 in total as enrolling directly. Reply to your course welcome email when enrolment opens and I’ll send you a single-use code.
Why $597 when the recorded course is $297?
Because of what the difference buys: me, live, while you set up and run the analysis, answering your questions as they come up — and a private 1:1 on your own screen. The recorded course is the same analysis without either. And it’s included with the workshop, so you get both.
Can several people from my lab join?
Yes. For three or more people from the same institution, please don’t enrol one by one: contact me to set up the group training. I’ll quote a single price for the whole group, and each person still gets their own 1:1.
Or a session for your lab alone, scheduled around your calendar and taught on your own data.
To set up either, email lei.guo@ngs101.com with how many people would join, your institution, and what kind of screens you work with, and I’ll reply with the options and a price.
Can I get an invoice so my grant or my PI can pay?
Yes. Email me with what the invoice needs to show — institution name and address, a PO number, whatever your finance office asks for. If they need the paperwork before anyone can pay, say so and I’ll send it first.
Not sure it’s right for you? Ask me — lei.guo@ngs101.com. Tell me about your screen, or what you’ve already tried and where it fell apart, and I’ll tell you honestly whether this workshop is what you need. Invoices and lab groups go to the same address.
Don’t want to wait for 2027?
The recorded course is available today: the same analysis on the same screen, 2 h 35 m of video, the handout, the practice workbook, and the pipeline with the example data bundled in. A free ten-minute walkthrough shows you the whole course before you decide anything.
And it’s not a dead end. The full $297 comes off the workshop whenever you’re ready for it — $297 + $300 = $597, so starting with the recording never costs you more.
The first date is announced
to the waitlist first.
Leave your email and you’ll hear before anyone else: the date, the time and how to enrol. Nothing else, and nothing to commit to.
Questions in the meantime? lei.guo@ngs101.com