Building Kazakhstan’s Genomics Capacity
Across the world, genomics and bioinformatics are increasingly seen not as narrow technical specialisms, but as foundational tools for tackling the defining challenges of the twenty-first century: food security, biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, and public health. Building the human capacity to work with very large biological datasets has become as strategically important as building any physical research infrastructure - and few countries have yet established a sustainable national pipeline for training such specialists.
At North Kazakhstan University named after M. Kozybayev, one such initiative is now well underway. Through its Center of Agrocompetence, the university has established the International School of Genomics and Bioinformatics, a recurring international training platform that has become one of the first of its kind in Central Asia. The most recent edition - the Spring School on Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics, held in Petropavlovsk on 18-22 May 2026 - brought together 14 researchers and graduate students from Kozybayev University, partner institutions across Kazakhstan, and four further countries of the region. Organised with the support of the Islamic Organization for Food Security (IOFS), the school welcomed participants from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia, and was led in person by Prof. Rod Wing (Arizona Genomics Institute) and Prof. Andrea Zuccolo, with leading international experts joining online from KAUST (Saudi Arabia) and the University of Leeds (United Kingdom).
The school is more than an educational event. It is the engine of a broader scientific agenda at Kozybayev University that is now beginning to produce tangible results for the country. The skills and infrastructure developed through the school directly support the "National Treasures" Genomics Project, dedicated to sequencing species of cultural and ecological significance to Kazakhstan. Within this programme, a project is advancing toward the assembly of the first chromosome-level reference genome of the Caspian seal, in collaboration with Dr. Simon J. Goodman of the University of Leeds and the Caspian Seal Research and Rehabilitation Center; in parallel, sequencing work on the Greig tulip - one of the most emblematic plant species of the Kazakh steppe - is now under way.
The same platform underpins Kozybayev University's contribution to national agrogenomics. Within this framework, the university is pursuing a portfolio of projects focused on the application of genomics to Kazakhstan's strategic crops - including wheat and rice - in support of the country's long-term food security. These efforts translate the methods taught at the school - genome assembly, comparative genomics, AI-based prediction, speed breeding - directly into approaches for developing domestic varieties adapted to the climatic and agronomic conditions of Kazakhstan's regions.
Against the backdrop of a global search for sustainable models of human capital formation in the life sciences, the School of Genomics at Kozybayev University offers a concrete example of how a single training initiative can simultaneously serve education, biodiversity conservation, and food security - and how a regional university can become an international node in one of the fastest-moving fields of contemporary science.