Here at PacBio, we have had the privilege of awarding many SMRT Grants to intrepid scientists who believe that HiFi sequencing data can help them achieve their goals. Recently, we invited people to apply for our Clinical Research SMRT Grant for projects with a link to potential clinical utility. We believe these projects could benefit tremendously from the value of HiFi reads, which offer both high accuracy and long reads to reveal genomic insights often missed by short-read sequencing. Narrowing these applications down to just one winner is always challenging, but this time we found it to be impossible. So,…
Today we’re pleased to announce the three winners of our latest SMRT Grant which called for teams of researchers and collaborative projects that could be addressed using the power of HiFi sequencing. The winners are seeking to solve a diverse set of questions from mussel-hopping transmissible cancer to the power of pistachios to help tackle climate change, and sex determination in bearded dragons. The 2020 HiFi for All – Collaborations SMRT Grant Program was open to scientists worldwide and offered three winning projects awards of up to 10 SMRT Cells 8M and sequencing on the Sequel II or…
SMRT Grant winner Ali R. Zomorrodi of Harvard Medical School Celiac disease happens in the gut, but scientists still don’t fully understand the complex interplay between host genetics and the environmental factors that lead to the development of the autoimmune digestive disease. Researchers at the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center of MassGeneral Hospital for Children and Harvard Medical School are hoping to shed light on the ‘microbial dark matter’ in the breastmilk of mothers with celiac disease and in the intestine of celiac children using full-length 16S rRNA and metagenome sequencing — they will be supported in their efforts…
PacBio highly accurate long reads, known as HiFi reads, offer all the benefits of long-read sequencing with accuracy comparable to short-read sequencing. To celebrate this new paradigm in sequencing technology, we hosted the 2019 HiFi for All SMRT Grant this past fall. This SMRT Grant was open to scientists worldwide and offered three winning projects each up to six SMRT Cells 8M and sequencing on the Sequel II System by our Certified Service Providers and co-sponsors. In response to our call for projects across the range of SMRT Sequencing applications, we received many truly compelling proposals, which made selecting…
Cleo van Diemen, University Medical Center Groningen A hearty congratulations to Cleo van Diemen at the University Medical Center Groningen for winning the 2019 Neuroscience SMRT Grant! Van Diemen’s impressive proposal involves using PacBio long-read sequencing to find new genetic mechanisms associated with spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA). While some 70% of SCA patients can get clear diagnostic and prognostic information because they have one of the ~37 genes known to be associated with this condition, 30% of patients have no such clarity. In this project, van Diemen and her colleagues will use their SMRT Grant award to generate highly accurate long…
Patients with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) want to know their size — the size of the expansion of repeats of the unstable CTG sequences that cause the progressive deterioration of neuromuscular functions that they might face. Size matters to them, because it has been found to correlate with the severity and onset of symptoms, which can range from severe cardiac and respiratory abnormalities and intellectual impairment in children, to muscle weakness, hypersomnolence or cataracts in adults. The earlier the onset, the more severe the symptoms tend to be. The autosomal disorder, which is the most common form of inherited…
Two years ago, Carola Greve and colleagues at the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn, Germany, were seeking to #SeqtheSlug as part of the 2017 Plant and Animal SMRT Grant competition, and the popular project was a close runner-up. Greve didn’t give up on her quest to sequence the ‘solar-powered’ sea slug. We caught up with her recently at the SMRT Leiden Scientific Symposium, where her update on the sea slug project earned her a Best Poster award. Why the sea slug? Although Mollusca represents the second largest animal phylum with around 85,000 extant species, only 23 mollusc genomes…
Maya and her partner, Sgt. Nic Banuelos, of the UWPD K9 unit First there was Shadow, the poodle owned by gene-entrepreneur Craig Venter. Then there was Tasha, a female Boxer. Will the next de-coded dog be Maya, a German Shepherd Dog that helps police the campus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? Maya has been basking in social media celebrity alongside her human companion Sgt. Nic Banuelos, PhD students Lauren Baker and Emily Binversie, technician Jorden Gruel, veterinary surgeon-scientists Susannah Sample and Peter Muir, and Peter’s woven likeness, after winning the 2019 Plant and Animal SMRT Grant, co-sponsored by Histogenetics. We…
Kristen Sund Please join us in congratulating Kristen Sund from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center for winning our 2018 Structural Variation SMRT Grant Program! Her proposal to use SMRT Sequencing to pinpoint the genetic mechanism responsible for neurological disease in patients with complex structural rearrangements definitely captured our attention. We caught up with Kristen to learn more about her background, her research, and how she hopes to use the data generated through this grant. How did you get into this field? I have always had a very strong interest in research and patient care, so I decided to get training…
What has four legs, lots of fat and fur, and will possibly help uncover novel mechanisms to combat diabetes? Photo courtesy of WSU Bear Center Grizzly bears! If humans were to undergo regular, extended cycles of weight gain and inactivity, they’d likely end up with obesity, muscle atrophy, or type 2 diabetes. But grizzly bears experience no ill effects from their annual fat gain and sedentary hibernation. Somehow they are able to switch their insulin resistance between seasons, and researchers at Washington State University are hoping to figure out how, with possible therapeutic value for humans. We’re proud to support…
Mark Webber We’re pleased to announce the winner of the 2018 Microbial Genomics SMRT Grant. Mark Webber, Research Leader at Quadram Institute Bioscience in the UK, will get free SMRT Sequencing and analysis from our certified service provider, the Genomics Resource Center at the University of Maryland. His goal is to further a project designed to understand how bacteria on the skin of premature babies in neonatal intensive care units acquire resistance to the antiseptics used to prevent infections. We spoke with Mark to learn more about his work and how the SMRT Grant will make a difference. Q:…
UPDATE (October 2020): Sandy’s genome assembly is now available here. From wild animals to perfect pets, dogs have undergone some interesting changes during their centuries-long domestication. Intent on unraveling some of the developmental secrets of the process, a team of scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, is doing deep dives into the genomes of a range of canine cousins along the evolutionary chain. A desert dingo named Sandy has already provided some insight into the process after its genome was sequenced as part of the 2017 Plant and Animal SMRT Grant. Study leader…
We’re pleased to announce the winner of this year’s ‘Open Your Eyes to Isoform Diversity’ SMRT Grant, which was launched during the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting. The grant program, co-sponsored by PacBio and GENEWIZ, received many compelling entries, and it was a challenge choosing just one winner. Congratulations to Andrew Ludlow, a new faculty member at the University of Michigan, who impressed reviewers with his proposal to investigate the splicing of transcripts regulated by the oncogene NOVA1. Ludlow notes that in lung cancer cells, NOVA1 acts as a splicing enhancer to produce full-length hTERT and promote telomerase…
We’re excited to be heading to Washington, DC, for the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. The PacBio team always enjoys hearing about the latest in cancer translational research at AACR, along with thousands of leading scientists in the field. Many of those scientists have already learned that SMRT Sequencing provides a unique view into cancer, revealing structural variation, phasing distant variants, and delivering full-length isoform sequences. With uniform coverage, industry-leading consensus accuracy, and reads extending to tens of kilobases, PacBio long-read sequencing gives researchers the ability to monitor and make sense of even the most complex…
Blog readers may recall that last year’s SMRT Grant winner was Renying Zhuo from the Chinese Academy of Forestry. We’re pleased to report that the project is now complete! Zhuo proposed sequencing the genomes of two strains of the Sedum alfredii plant from the same ecosystem — one that accumulates cadmium ions from polluted soil and one that doesn’t. The goal was to use high-quality assemblies for comparative genomic analysis to determine the genetic mechanisms responsible for this remediation effect. Plant DNA was sequenced on the Sequel System by RTL Genomics, and genome assembly was performed by Computomics. (We’re also grateful…