NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – A New Zealand government-funded collaborative genomics initiative, New Zealand Genomics Limited, said today that it is preparing to launch an integrated genomics service that will provide sequencing technologies, expertise, and information technology solutions.
Part of the initiative will include a partnership with Illumina to enable researchers to use the MiSeq platform for small research projects, NZGL said.
NZGL Chief Executive Tony Lough said today that the final elements of the NZGL initiative, which the government launched three years ago with NZ$40.6 million (US$32.6 million) in funding over 10 years, including the sequencing, bioinformatics, and now the IT cloud, are all in place. NZGL said it plans to launch its genomics and informatics services by the end of the year.
Three collaborators — the University of Auckland, the University of Otago, and Massey University — have committed additional funding for the project.
Speaking at the Queenstown Molecular Biology Conference today, Lough said Biomatters will provide supporting software for the initiative, while Telecom ICT's Gen-I services division will provide the IT infrastructure for the program.
"NZGL can now provide a fully-integrated genomics solution for the New Zealand research community," Lough added.
Under the partnership with Illumina, NZGL and the company will promote the use of two MiSeq instruments at the universities at Massey and Auckland, and NZGL will provide support personnel and depreciation costs for the MiSeq runs, as well as support from its Bioinformatics Team.
The scope of the proposed small projects can cover anything involving the use of NZGL's next-generation sequencing and up to 10 hours of bioinformatics services.
The computing storage infrastructure provided by Gen-I consists of high memory services, a high performance computing cluster, and "substantial storage," NZGL said.