We’re currently testing some new methods in the lab to find an optimal exome library prep, not the capture just the prep. The ideal would be a PCR-free exome, however we want to work with limited material and so maximising library prep efficiency is key, […]

Two woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) have had their genomes sequenced by a team led by the Swedish Museum of Natural History: Complete Genomes Reveal Signatures of Demographic and Genetic Declines in the Woolly Mammoth. The BBC story included coverage of the Long Now Foundation and […]

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh is one of the best books I’ve ever read, the last time a book made me cry I was a kid. I was in tears several times, including on a flight from […]

Illumina launched NeoPrep at AGBT and Keith Robison at OmicsOmics wrote a detailed summary of what Illumina say the NeoPrep is capable of (he compared this movie of the electro-wetting technology to video games of his, and my, youth), I thought I’d write down my […]

Nature Methods recently carried a News & Views article from Nick Loman and Mick Watson: “Successful test launch for nanopore sequencingâ€, in which they discuss the early reports of MinION usage; including a paper in the same issue of Nature Methods (Jain et al). They […]

Looks like I missed out on a bargain, the BGI has sold all their HiSeq 2500 instruments  on eBay, but the auction ended yesterday.PS: Is the 454 on eBay for £7000 an April fool?

I’ve written before about how much I liked Nature Methods “Points of View†by Bang Wong and I created a public Mendeley group so you could access the papers. I’d also said that having the articles collected together as a hard-copy version would be great.Now […]

A great poster at AGBT was presented by Boreal Genomics and available on the Nanopore wiki for MAPpers. In A nanopore liquid biopsy Patrick Davies describes their combination of the Boreal On-Target with ONT MinION sequencing to detect mutant allele fractions in ctDNA of sub […]

I’ve currently got three positions open in my lab and thought I’d use this blog as another way to get the message out to prospective candidates. Two people recently moved onto new jobs; one in Inivata (the first spin-out from CRUK-CI) and one at AbCam, […]

I caught up with a new company on the target capture scene, Directed Genomics, at AGBT. Their approach is based on a simple idea: if you want to sequence exomes, why not capture only exons? Most exome-seq methods (Illumina, Agilent, Nimblegen) use oligo-baits to pull-down […]