Sequencing and IT/Bioinformatics

The RU will closely collaborate with the technology platforms at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, including one of Germany’s largest academic sequencing centers, the CCGA. Together with three other sites across the country, the CCGA is part of a DFG funded national sequencing infrastructure, offering services and expertise in a range of cutting-edge technologies. Consequently, the RU has access to a state-of-the art genotyping platform (Sequenom, TaqMan, Illumina GoldenGate, Illumina Infinium) but also the latest in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies – including short read sequencers from both Illumina (2× Illumina NovaSeqs, 2× Illumina HiSeqs 3000/4000, 2× Illumina MiSeqs, 1× Illumina NextSeq) as well as MGI (MGI G400). The theoretical capacity of this setup equates to several hundred human genomes per week (at 30X coverage). This is complemented by a high-throughput long read sequencer (Pacbio Sequel II) as well as a barcoding instrument for single-cell experiments (10XGenomics Chromium). Modern analytics and robotics instruments are available for highly standardized processing at scale (2× PerkinElmer SciClone, 2× Zephyr and 2× Janus).

In order to efficiently analyze data generated by this production-grade infrastructure, the IKMB operates a dedicated compute cluster with over 1.200 compute cores and a combined storage capacity of well over 3 petabyte (PB) – ~1PB “hot” storage for computations, 2PB as a long-term “object store” and a 1.5PB tape archive. This resource has been continuously updated over the years, most recently through the acquisition of two DFG 91b GG grant applications (>2.5M € investment into IT hardware), and will be available to the RU. Finally, the IKMB/CCGA operates a dedicated bioinformatics platform which can support users in the processing and interpretation of a wide range of data types and across scientific applications.