February, 2008

There has been tremendous interest in the newly acquired Illumina machine that was recently purchased using Cancer Center Funds.  Thanks to the efforts of several CCGS faculty members (Corbin Jones, Jason Lieb, Jeff Dangl, and Hemant Kelkar), initial setup and runs on the machine have gone smoothly, although there is still a fair amount of troubleshooting to be done.  Submissions from individual labs are now being accepted (Application Instructions) with runs beginning March 1. ChIP-seq and shotgun sequencing are the applications that will initially receive the highest priority, but other applications including Digital Gene Expression (DGE), and micro RNA profiling are being tested and will become widely available once conditions are standardized. The capacity of this single machine is not large at this time and priority will be placed on those applications that demonstrate feasibility, impact, and importantly, the ability to analyze the large amount of data generated.  The projected cost, which is heavily subsidized, is $500/lane (7-8 lanes/flow cell).  It currently takes 3 days to run a single flow cell and 12 hours for analysis. The Center is excited to be an active participant in the evolution of this cutting edge resource as it adapts to increased demand and emerging technologies. In the future, it is anticipated that additional machines will be added with improvements for broader applications, improved read lengths, and shortened run times. Stay tuned.