BioMicroCenter:News2015
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JUNE 2015
Hello everyone, A couple of updates from the BioMicro Center to let you know about as we begin summer.
- Microarrays: Starting in July, we will be phasing out our Agilent microarray service. The demand for this platform has been very weak and the vendor support has been even weaker. We will continue to maintain the scanner for walkup service but labeling and hybridization services will be done on a custom basis only. Affymetrix services will continue, and will even decrease in price significantly as the company has provided us with very aggressive pricing for the next year. A list of prices for the next year is on our website.
- Bioinformatics: We have begun a monthly training series in informatics for our core researchers. We are still in the pilot phase and definitely have some kinks to work out as we introduce these new classes. The classes will alternate between basic introductions and more advanced topics but will generally be in the afternoon on the second Monday of each month. Duan Ma will be leading this effort. You can find the calendar on our website.
- Sequencing: We are making a few tweaks to the pricing for Illumina sequencing – all in the down direction. The initial reprime for index reads on the HiSeq will now be included in the price of the lane. Additionally, multiplex costs will be removed for all libraries prepped by the BMC.
- We are continuing to work closely with Illumina on the ongoing challenges with read quality for long MiSeq runs. The issues have been traced to the sequencing reagents and we are aware Illumina is working aggressively on a solution. However, there is still no timeline on a fix yet. 250PE and particularly 300PE MiSeq runs should be done cautiously.
Finally, a couple personnel changes to know about. Fangming and Jonathan will be rotating off in a couple weeks. We are bringing their replacements, Rachel and Rob, up to speed now and they’ll be ready by July. We also are welcoming Vidya Subramanian on board as our new technology development specialist. She will be focusing initially on bringing new library preparation methodologies into the BioMicro Center.
