Norwegian Seq centre (completed)

Norwegian High-Throughput Sequencing Centre

See the NSC website for full details of this project.

About the project

This proposal to establish an internationally competitive Norwegian High-Throughput Sequencing Centre (NSC) is built upon the existing HTS instruments in Norway: the Illumina Genome Analyzer II (GAII), and the 454 (Roche) sequencing platforms at Institute of Medical Genetics (IMG) and Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES). Both of these University of Oslo (UoO) affiliated centers have already status as core facilities for Southeastern Regional Health Authorities (which cover >50% of Hospital capacity in Norway) and nationally (RCN, FUGE), respectively. We propose a coordinated activity between the two sites to serve the entire research community of Norway for resequencing, transcriptomics, metagenomics and de novo sequencing. For this purpose we apply for infrastructures at IMG and CEES including additional and upgraded sequencers, quality assurance and automation equipment and human resources for building a streamlined infrastructure. NSC will have two sites: at IMG for Illumina GAII based analyses (to a large extent re-sequencing, transcriptomics and epigenetics) and at CEES for 454-based analyses (de novo sequencing, metagenomics and transcriptomics/EST and mainly non-human projects). There will be close collaborations with the Bioinformatics FUGE platforms and with USIT regarding downstream sequence analysis and data storage. An important part of the proposal is establishment of a pipeline for sequence analysis adaptable for most needs and to provide an interface between the users' needs and the sequencing platform. NSC has established a steering committee of leading scientists across Norway and a scientific advisory board consisting of leading international experts which will ensure optimal functionality at all levels of the sequencing centre. As part of NSC we will also provide services from a bioethical review board to deal with ethical challenges related to incidental findings and return of results policies in human resequencing project.