The long-term objective of this proposal is to enable innovative research on the study of cell-to-cell heterogeneity, a characteristic that is fundamental to essentially all human afflictions but severely understudied because of technical limitation till now. The revolutionary advancements in genomics technology, including next-gen sequencing (NGS), have made it possible to study a living system at the single cell resolution to uncover its tremendous cellular heterogeneity. As a result, single-cell genomics has been becoming a new frontier for biomedical research. NUSeq, the NGS/genomics core facility at Northwestern University, witnesses a significant increase in demand for single cell genomics technology by the University's biomedical community. This proposal requests funds to acquire a Chromium System from 10x Genomics to provide Northwestern researchers with the much- needed capabilities on single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), single-cell immune profiling, and single-cell DNA sequencing, including structural variant analysis from the use of linked-reads. Compared to other single-cell genomics systems, the 10x Chromium is the only system that can provide the throughput that NUSeq users need. The Chromium's unique GemCode technology allows fast processing of up to 80,000 cells at the lowest multiplet rate and cost per cell among all currently available scRNA-seq systems. Toward the acquisition of this system, Northwestern University will provide strong institutional support for the operation and maintenance of the instrument. Acquisition of the 10x Chromium System will enable NUSeq to create exciting new services on high-throughput single-cell genomics and thereby spur Northwestern research in cancer, cardiovascular, infectious, neurodegenerative diseases, pharmacogenomics, stem cell therapy, and many other areas.
Genome technology advancements have made it possible to study the tremendous cell-to-cell variation that underlies all disease development. Single cell genomics has become the new frontier in biomedical research. In this proposal the Northwestern University Genomics Core Facility NUSeq requests fund to acquire a high-throughput single-cell RNA and DNA sequencing system, the 10x Chromium, to meet the increasing demand at Northwestern for single cell genomics capabilities.
