ASM SMRT Grant Winner: Squirrel Microbiome!

We’re pleased to announce the winner of this year’s SMRT Grant, which launched during the American Society for Microbiology annual meeting this summer. The grant program, co-sponsored by PacBio and the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS), was very competitive, with over 100 submitted proposals. From this broad range of entries, our judges faced quite a task choosing just one recipient for the grant.

Congratulations to Jessica Sieber from the University of Minnesota Duluth, who impressed reviewers with her proposal, “Metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiota of the 13-lined ground squirrel, a model fat storing hibernator.”

Ground squirrels have been models for human health conditions from diabetes and obesity to longevity and hypothermia. These particular squirrels are scientifically interesting because they almost triple their weight before going into a six-month hibernation, during which they consume nothing. Sieber notes that the hibernation process involves reducing the squirrel’s body temperature to 4 degrees Celsius. While that should be a challenging environment for the animal’s gut microbes, in fact they appear to thrive and may be responsible for folate production to protect the squirrel’s brain during hibernation. A deeper understanding of the role these microbiota play in this process may have downstream implications for human health.

Sieber’s project involves using SMRT Sequencing to produce a high-resolution picture of these gut microbial communities, including how they withstand the cold hibernation temperature. We look forward to learning about the new insights she discovers as a result of this grant!

In addition to the grant winner, the submitters of the top 10 proposals will have the opportunity to conduct their projects through IGS with a 20% discount on SMRT sequencing. Thank you to all of the submitters who participated in the grant competition. We look forward to a number of exciting new projects in the coming months!

Do you have a project that could benefit from SMRT sequencing or any of our other sequencing and analysis services? If so, please contact us for a free project consultation.

GRC a PacBio Certified Service Provider; Co-sponsoring SMRTest Microbe Grant Program at ASM 2015

We are pleased to announce that the GRC is the first PacBio certified service provider on the East Coast. This recently announced program is a partnership between PacBio and select sequence providers who have completed the certification process and offer the highest quality sequencing and analysis services using the PacBio technology. We offer a full range of PacBio services, including whole genome sequencing, transcriptome sequencing via Iso-Seq, targeted amplicon sequencing, and other customized applications. Our analysis team has expertise in genome assembly and annotation, variant analysis, transcriptome analysis, and base modification detection. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with PacBio and offering the highest quality sequencing and analysis to our customers and collaborators.

As part of this new partnership, the GRC is proud to co-sponsor the SMRTest Microbe Grant Program. One lucky winner will receive sequencing and analysis services from the GRC. To enter, submit a short grant application detailing your project and how it would benefit from the long reads and high consensus accuracy of SMRT Sequencing. The deadline for submissions is June 27, 2015.

For more information on our full range of sequencing and analysis services, visit our Laboratory Services and Analysis Services pages. Please contact us if you have any questions or would like a quote.

If you are attending ASM 2015 next week, please stop by the IGS booth (#776) to learn more about the grant program and all of our sequencing and analysis services. See you in New Orleans!