AWARDED PROJECTS

Economical high throughput de novo whole genome assembly

Overview

“De novo” sequencing, or constructing an individual’s genome from his or her own data alone (as opposed to comparing it to a reference genome), is a formidable task, akin to assembling a jigsaw puzzle comprising hundreds of millions of small blank pieces. Drs. Si Lok, Stephen Scherer, and their colleagues from The Hospital for Sick Children are developing a new “mate-pair” technology that would overcome the financial and logistical barriers to de novo sequencing by linking sequences to one or more other reads in precisely known orientations and distances. Mate-pair technology would create a high-resolution backbone to enable de novo sequencing to be carried out in a single simple step. This new adaptation of mate-pair sequencing is a disruptive technology that could supersede all current methods of de novo sequencing, thereby representing a leap forward in many areas of research and, ultimately, in healthcare.