Next generation sequencer

为了了解事物是如何运作的，科学家通常需要观察细胞内部或组织样本，看看当发生疾病、营养不良或损伤时，或者在愈合和修复过程中，发生了什么变化。传统上，我们不得不猜测可能会发生什么变化，并一次寻找一件事情的变化。对于许多不同的问题，这都是正确的。如果我们想看人的DNA的差异，我们一次只能看一点点。但是--人与人之间的DNA往往存在许多微小的差异，能够获得更大的图像，或者同时查看许多片段，会更有用。如果我们想要观察细胞中不同RNA的数量和种类的变化(即，细胞用来组成它们的结构和完成工作的蓝图)-我们也必须一次只看一件事情来做到这一点。这很慢，但这也意味着我们可能会错过一个非常重要的变化，因为我们不知道它正在变化。如果我们想看看细胞是如何启动它们的DNA来实现这些事情的，我们还必须一次测试这一个基因。然而，现在有了一种快速分析所有这些东西的新平台，称为下一代(Next Gen)测序。能够看到所有正在变化的事物将帮助我们获得比以前更大的图景。这种设备将以不同的方式帮助滑铁卢大学的许多不同的研究人员。其中一些人正在研究大脑是如何工作的，从分子到细胞，再到整个大脑发出电信号的能力。其他人正在研究衰老或患有癌症的人会发生什么。一些人试图了解儿童视力的发育问题。其他人感兴趣的是怀孕期间的变化对以后的后代有何影响。访问这一强大的资源将帮助我们保持加拿大研究的领先地位，将我们带到我们以前无法想象的方向。

In order to understand how things work, scientists often need to look inside cells or at samples of tissues, to see what is changing when there is disease, or poor nutrition, or injury, or in healing and repair. Traditionally, we have had to guess what might be changing, and to look for changes in one thing at a time. This held true for lots of different questions. If we wanted to look at differences in people's DNA, we could only look at one little bit at a time. But - there are often very many little tiny differences in DNA between people, and it would be much more useful to be able to get a bigger picture, or look at lots of pieces at once. If we wanted to look at changes in the amount and sort of different RNAs that are in cells (ie. the blueprint that cells use to make up their structure, and to do the work) - we also had to do this by looking at one thing at a time. This was slow, but it also meant that we could miss a very important change, because we didn't know it was changing. If we wanted to look at how cells turn on their DNA to make things happen, we also had to test this one gene at a time. However, a new platform for rapidly analyzing all of these things is now available, called Next Generation (Next Gen) sequencing. Being able to see all of the things that are changing will help us to get a much bigger picture than before. This equipment will help lots of different researchers at the University of Waterloo, in different ways. Some of these people are studying how the brain works, from molecules to cells to the whole brain's ability to do electrical signaling. Others are studying what happens in people who are aging or have cancer. Some are trying to understand developmental problems in eyesight in kids. Others are interested in how changes during pregnancy affect offspring later on. Access to this powerful resource will help us to keep Canadian research at the leading edge, by taking us in directions that we could not previously have envisioned.