Empowering research with ultra-fast high-throughput genome sequencing on the benchtop

生物学研究正处于一场革命性的变革之中。这场革命是由我们快速而廉价地对整个基因组进行测序的能力的爆炸性增长推动的，人类基因组测序需要10年的时间，现在只需要1天。这种信息爆炸正在推动许多学科的生物研究取得巨大进展，并有望克服英国和世界面临的许多重大挑战，包括改善人类健康、可持续食品生产、环境保护和可再生生物能源。从一开始，这种NGS技术通常是由有财力投资于所需昂贵资本设备的大规模测序“工厂”向研究人员提供的一项服务。虽然有效，但这些服务提供商往往缺乏灵活性和响应性，这增加了在较小的实验室和传统上与基因组学无关的领域生产性采用NGS的障碍。这在许多方面导致在BBSRC高度优先的许多领域，如粮食安全、生物能源和环境变化，对NGS的吸收较慢。阿伯丁大学在BBSRC资助的与这些优先领域相关的研究方面尤其强大，包括鱼类生理学、作物遗传学、植物与土壤相互作用、树木病理学以及扁虱和螨类生物学的研究。不幸的是，在当前大规模NGS提供商的环境下，这些社区没有得到足够的服务。在阿伯丁大学基因组生物和医学中心(CGEBM)内购买新的Illumina NextSeq 500 DNA测序仪将有助于克服这一使用障碍，导致在这些目前由BBSRC资助的阿伯丁大学和当地研究社区内加强基因组学的利用。NextSeq 500提供的新能力还将使Aberdeen在与人类健康相关的研究领域继续保持卓越，包括健康衰老和感染生物学；十多年来，Aberdeen大学的研究人员一直在利用High Three基因组学。此外，我们的经验是，启动新的NGS应用程序，使理解取得真正进展，往往需要开发工作，而开发工作通过与设施运营者的直接互动更容易实现，如果这些设施是当地的，这一过程就会容易得多。

Biological research is in the midst of a revolutionary change. This revolution is being driven by the explosive increase in our ability to rapidly and cheaply sequence whole genomes which has gone from taking 10 years to sequence a human genome to just 1 day. Such an information explosion is spurring massive advances in biological research across many disciplines, and holds tremendous promise for surmounting many of the major challenges facing the UK and the world, including improved human health, sustainable food production, protection of the environment, and renewable bioenergy. From its inception such NGS technology has generally been provided as a service to researchers by large-scale sequencing 'factories' with the financial capacity to invest in the expensive capital equipment required. Though effective, such service providers tend to lack flexibility and responsiveness, raising barriers to the productive uptake of NGS in both smaller laboratories and in fields not traditionally associated with genomics. This has in many ways led to a slower uptake of NGS in many fields of high priority to the BBSRC such as food security, bioenergy and environmental change. The University of Aberdeen is particularly strong in BBSRC funded research relevant to these priority areas, including research into fish physiology, crop genetics, plant and soil interactions, tree pathology, and tick and mite biology. Unfortunately, these communities are under served in this current climate of large-scale NGS providers. Acquisition of the new Illumina NextSeq 500 DNA sequencer within the University of Aberdeen's Centre for Genome-Enabled Biology and Medicine (CGEBM) will help to overcome this barrier to use, leading to an enhanced utilisation of genomics within these currently underserved BBSRC funded research communities at the University of Aberdeen and locally. The new capacity provided by the NextSeq 500 will also enable Aberdeen's continued excellence in research relating to human health, including healthy ageing and infection biology; areas where researchers at the University of Aberdeen have been exploiting high through put genomics for over a decade. Further, it is our experience that initiation of new applications of NGS that make real advances in understanding, often requires developmental work, which is more easily achieved through direct interaction with those running the facilities, a process made much easier if these facilities are local.