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所推动的，这种能力已经从需要10年才能对人类基因组进行测序缩短到只需1天。这样的信息爆炸刺激了许多学科的生物研究的巨大进步，并为克服英国和世界面临的许多重大挑战带来了巨大的希望，包括改善人类健康，可持续粮食生产，环境保护和可再生生物能源。从一开始，这样的NGS技术通常由具有投资所需的昂贵资本设备的财务能力的大规模测序“工厂”作为服务提供给研究人员。虽然有效，但这些服务提供者往往缺乏灵活性和反应能力，从而增加了在小型实验室和传统上与基因组学无关的领域生产性吸收NGS的障碍。这在许多方面导致了对生物安全与资源中心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的吸收速度较慢。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，植物和土壤相互作用，树木病理学以及蜱螨生物学的研究。不幸的是，这些社区在目前大规模NGS提供商的环境下服务不足。在阿伯丁大学基因组生物学和医学中心（CGEBM）内收购新的Illumina NextSeq 500 DNA测序仪将有助于克服这一使用障碍，从而提高基因组学在阿伯丁大学和当地目前服务不足的BBSRC资助的研究社区内的利用率。NextSeq 500提供的新能力还将使阿伯丁在与人类健康相关的研究方面继续保持卓越，包括健康老龄化和感染生物学;阿伯丁大学的研究人员十多年来一直在利用高通量基因组学。此外，根据我们的经验，要开始新的核地面系统应用，在理解方面取得真实的进展，往往需要开展发展工作，而这一工作更容易通过与设施管理者的直接互动来实现，如果这些设施是地方性的，这一过程就容易得多。

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.