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Events 2009

Next Generation Sequencing Applications using the Roche 454/GS FLX Platform Workshop

Wednesday Jan. 28, 2009
MaRS Auditorium, MaRS Discovery District
101 College Street, Suite 100
Toronto, ON M5G 1L7

9:50 - 10:00 a.m.
Dr. Steve Scherer (TCAG): Opening Remarks

10:00 -10:30 a.m.
Dr. Lei Du (Roche): New Genomic Applications on the GS FLX Sequencing System

10:30 -11:00 a.m.
Dr. HendrikPoinar(McMaster) Paleogenomics

11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Christina Middle (Nimblegen) Using Microarrays to Capture MBs of Sequence

11:45 - 12:30 p.m.
Lunch

12:30 - 1:00 p.m.
Dr. Mehrdad Hajibabaei (U. Guelph): Environmental and Biodiversity Genomics

1:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Dr. Sergio Pereira (TCAG): 454 PyrosequencingServices at TCAG

1:30 - 1:50 p.m.
Dr. Richard Wintle (TCAG): Closing Remarks

Download agenda (Acrobat 77 KB)

The Centre for Applied Genomics (TCAG), Roche Diagnostics Canada and the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) co-hosted a workshop last week on the topic of Roche's next generation sequencing technology. This proved to be very successful, with over 100 attendees. Considering the weather, and the number of people travelling from out of town, including London, Ottawa, Hamilton, Guelph and Waterloo, we were overwhelmed with the turnout. Roche and Nimblegen were very happy with the turnout, and some potential projects that were discussed.

Stephen Scherer, the director of TCAG, opened the workshop with a brief discussion of the current state of genomics technology with reference to whole genome sequencing and analysis, and the potential for further development in the field. His talk was followed by Roche's Janna Lanza, discussing recent advances in Roche sequencing technologies and applications being developed for their instrument. Applications included de novo- and re-sequencing, transcriptomics, and amplicon sequencing. Christine Middle, field application scientist from Roche/Nimblegen, outlined Nimblegen array capture technology and introduced their new Human Exome Array product with the potential to capture ~180,000 exons and ~550 miRNAs.

Hendrick Poinar, from McMaster University, gave an excellent talk centering around paleogenomics. His research group has focused much effort on sequencing the mammoth genome using the 454 platform, but he also some briefly spoke about preliminary research on what he thinks may be the causative agent of the Great Plague that was the scourge of London (1665-1666). The data are currently being reviewed and should be published in the next couple of months. Using specimens of butterflies and moths deposited in a museum collection as an example, Mehrdad Hajibabaei, from the University of Guelph, discussed the potential to use Roche 454 sequencing to screen the DNA of hundreds of specimens at once, and identify which species were represented in the pool of DNA by comparing the sequence reads to the mitochondrial CO1 gene sequences from the Barcode of Life database.

Finally, Sergio Pereira, facility manager for next generation sequencing applications at TCAG, introduced the services offered by TCAG, and illustrated how samples for 454 sequencing are processed from the day they are received to final data generation. Richard Wintle, the Assistant Director of TCAG, closed the proceedings, stressing in his remarks the revolutionary nature of next-generation sequencing and the possibility of routine whole-genome sequencing in the very near future.

The winner of the $5,000 project using Roche/454 sequencing to be carried at TCAG went to David D'Souza, who works for Dr. Vanya Peltekova at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

We thank all the speakers, attendees and sponsors for making this workshop such a success.

For questions or comments contact the TCAG Manager,

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