description
- Genomics technologies, specifically sequencing and genotyping, continue to witness exciting developments in both increased scale and reduced costs. The Bristol Genomics Facility collaborates closely with a number of groups at Bristol including the Cereals Functional Genomics group , who remain at the cutting edge of technology development; via collaborations with Affymetrix and LGC a number of commercially successful products have been developed and utilised such as the Axiom 820K wheat high density array and the Axiom 35K wheat breeders array. These developments have resulted in Bristol becoming a centre of high throughput genotyping for multiple commercially important species following the installation of a 384-well Axiom GeneTitan high throughput genotyping platform in 2014 (ALERT 13). In 2015 the University provided funds for the facility to purchase both an Illumina MiSeq and NextSeq500 next generation sequencer. These various developments have resulted in the Facility processing over 120,000 DNA samples over the past four years. To continue to be at the forefront of technology development and application the Facility must maintain and improve its post-PCR sampling handling provision and procedures so that it is able to cope with the ever increasing demand for its services. Provision of a high throughput liquid handling instrument would enable to Bristol Genomics Facility to both develop new strategies (such as targeted genotyping by sequencing) and expand the number of applications that it can offer its internal and external users.