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Technical Platforms
The technology platforms at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre are staffed by teams of professional scientists with expertise in several areas of genomics research. These teams support researchers and collaborators in BC and around the world in work addressing topical questions in the life sciences.
The bioinformatics group at the GSC participates in diverse number of areas in computational genomic analysis such as expression profiling, gene regulation, comparative genomic analysis, genome assembly, BAC fingerprint physical map construction and laboratory information management. The platform has a number of computational biologists and software programmers working closely with all GSC activity areas providing analytical and software support. 
Sequencing platform High-throughput large-scale DNA analysis facility designed to maximize capacity while maintaining efficiency, scalability and flexibility. The platform is the largest platform of its type in Canada and is well recognized internationally. 
Established expertise in the construction of BAC fingerprint based physical maps. Physical maps have been constructed for the mouse, rat, poplar, C. Neoformans and salmon genomes. 
Affymetrix platform The GSC microarray platform can provide comprehensive analysis of Affymetrix GeneChip® microarray data. Current analyses include detection of genomic copy number changes, SNP genotyping, gene expression profiling and alternative splicing studies. |
The GSC currently has 6 Illumina Genome Analyzers, and offers both single-end and paired-end tag sequencing. The Genome Analyzer device can generate 40 million or more short DNA sequencing reads, which corresponds to more than 1gigabase of sequencing data, in each run. Sequencing libraries of various types have been constructed and analyzed, including libraries for gene expression (SAGE and whole-transcriptome shotgun sequencing), chromatin immuno-precipitation (ChIP), microRNA profiling, and whole genome shotgun sequencing. 
Proteomics platform The Proteomics group at the GSC performs protein and post-translational modification identification on protein samples using high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to nano-electrospray mass spectrometry. Current applications include protein-protein interaction mapping, and protein phosphorylation site detection and quantitation. 
Expression Cloning platform The GSC has established a large-scale high throughput clone rescue pipeline, as part of its work with the Mammalian Gene Collection. The platform uses an RT-PCR rescue approach to clone and sequence transcripts derived from genes. 
Drug Discovery platform The drug discovery platform performs high-throughput virtual screening using leading molecular docking software and high performance computing resources to find novel therapeutics for human diseases. |
Major funding for the Genomics Platform is provided by the Government of Canada through Genome Canada. Funding from Genome Canada flows through Genome BC, which also provides support to the Platform.
