Genomics facility opens at UNSW
UNSW’s Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics, said to be the largest and most comprehensive university-based facility of its kind in Australia, has found a new home.
Established in 1999 with a grant from the Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Foundation, the Ramaciotti Centre is one of the few dedicated genomics facilities in Australia that accommodates a full suite of genomics technologies and links these together using process management software. Recently relocated to UNSW’s $165 million Biosciences Building, the centre is now celebrating the opening of new custom-designed facilities.
“The new facility is designed for future growth, to further support the genomics community in NSW and in Australia,” said UNSW geneticist Professor Marc Wilkins, director of the Ramaciotti Centre.
Amongst other state-of-the-art technology, the centre will house two next-generation sequencing platforms that are anticipated to put NSW at the forefront of international genome sequencing capabilities. One of the new instruments, the Illumina NovaSeq 6000, can sequence up to three terabases of DNA in a single run — the equivalent of sequencing one human genome 930 times.
“This instrument is also very flexible and permits the analysis of genomes, gene expression and the regulatory processes that control this,” said Professor Wilkins. “It can be used for the analysis of animal, plant and microbial samples important for fundamental research into molecular biology, for research into agriculture and the environment, and for research into human wellness and disease.”
The centre is also housing a PacBio Sequel platform — an instrument that sequences single molecules of DNA.
“Remarkably, it can sequence lengths of DNA of up to 98 kilobases, and sequence up to one million of these simultaneously in one run,” Professor Wilkins said. “This type of sequencer is revolutionising genome sequencing of species that have, to date, been impossible to decode by other techniques.”
Professor Wilkins said the centre’s co-location with proteomics, bioinformatics, flow cytometry and imaging facilities will better facilitate collaboration among its 500 users each year, with collaborators coming from fields as diverse as biomedicine, conservation, the environment, agriculture and biotechnology. The centre is currently working with UNSW Professor Emad El-Omar and his team from St George Hospital to map the microbiota of the gut, which is linked to diseases include stroke, asthma, obesity, diabetes, mental health and pre-eclampsia in pregnant women.
The centre was also instrumental in a 2015 study of the koala genome, which revealed that the marsupials were genetically diverse and that their declining populations were the result of human-related activity rather than inbreeding. The sequencing of the koala genome has since informed policy and management decisions crucial to preserving this iconic species.
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