There is little debate that Next Generation Sequencing has added an invaluable new tool in the genomics toolkit, and is causing a paradigm shift in the design of genomic studies. Next Generation Sequencing is enabling a deeper examination into the structure and function of the genome, and it is imperative to make this technology widely available to the scientific community. To this end, UCLA currently offers four Next Generation Sequencing technologies to the research community through the Human Genetics Core laboratories: two Illumina Genome Analyzers (Solexas), one Applied Biosystems SOLiD, and one Roche GS- FLX (454). There are many ongoing research projects at UCLA using this technology, and a large community of scientists engaged in biomedical research for whom this technology will be beneficial in the very near future. However, preprocessing of samples has become a bottleneck. DNA library preparation is a critical and time- consuming step before samples can be analyzed on the genome sequencers. The requested BioMark MX/HX Genetic Analysis System has library preparation kits for the Illumina, SOLiD, and Roche sequencers. These kits offer great improvements in accuracy and speed of library preparation, which in turn improves downstream data quality. The BioMark System also uses a fraction of the amount of DNA starting material as other available methods, saving precious DNA samples and allowing analysis of samples previously too small to analyze. The ability to rapidly analyze very small amounts of DNA will be a particular advantage to the two projects in this proposal that are part of the Center for Rapid Influenza Surveillance and Research which investigates the distribution and transmission risks of avian influenza, a critical public health issue requiring rapid, high-throughput sequencing. A second key assay possible on the BioMark System is high-throughput single cell gene expression. This assay is critical to one major user's research into human fetal germ cell development, and will be valuable to many of the Core's users from UCLA's Broad Stem Cell Research Center (BSCRS) and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC). There is currently no instrument on campus that can perform the type of single cell assay possible on the BioMark. This System will make a valuable contribution to the UCLA research community, offering the types of high-throughput genomic technologies necessary to move biomedical research at UCLA into the next era of genomic discovery.
