Today, the UMN Genomics Center is excited to release lower FY 2024 rates for our services and to announce new options for faster turnaround time (TAT). Simply put, we are replacing one-size-fits-all “standard” rates with a range of options, referred to as “tiers”. Our overarching goal is to provide you with choice and control over the speed of your projects; you will decide for yourself how quickly your project should proceed.

During the week of Monday, November 27 - Friday, December 1, we will be moving and consolidating two lab spaces into a new, centralized lab at 4Front Technology Campus in Oakdale, MN. The UMGC Snyder Hall lab on the St. Paul campus will be relocating to 4Front. Snyder Hall will remain a sample drop-off site for the St. Paul campus.

The Melov lab is developing workflows for profiling biopsies of human skeletal muscle and ovary to identify signatures of senescent cells, a classical hallmark of aging. Method development includes defining a transcriptional signature of senescence ("senotype") in cell culture models of senescence, and then identifying that signature in specific cells in biopsied tissue.

Join us for our 11th Annual GenoFest on Friday, October 6, 2023! This informative open house is for the UMN research community to learn about emerging trends in genomics technologies, future plans for the UMGC, and available resources and services. This year will include UMGC and technology presentations, lab tours, and a resource fair.

The UMGC welcomes the arrival of the AVITI sequencing instrument from Element Biosciences! With outstanding data quality and compatibility with Illumina libraries, the AVITI will be of particular interest to single-cell and spatial researchers and researchers who require ultra-high quality reads. The AVITI service will officially launch in August/September.

This symposium aims to bring together U of M investigators interested in single-cell methods to discuss key approaches in data analysis and interpretation and the latest developments in single-cell technologies. It will feature in-depth presentations from U of M experts in immunology and the biology of aging, as well as an open panel discussion. This event is co-organized by the U of M Genomics Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. 

MSI bioinformatics analysts have been working with U of M researchers to design and analyze experiments using the Nanostring GeoMx DSP. In this presentation, MSI will discuss important considerations and resources for experimental design. And also discuss details of GeoMx data analysis including a demonstration of how to use both the on-instrument software and R packages to analyze a complex melanoma data set from Dr. Alessio Giubellino.

The University of Minnesota Genomics Center (UMGC) and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) invite you to join us for a day of presentations, tutorials, and project consultations in SMed on the Duluth campus. Meet with staff for project support and learn more about the genomic and informatic resources available to UMN researchers.

The UMN Genomics Center is excited to kick off its Spring 2023 Pilot Sequencing Program. To help UMN investigators generate preliminary data, the UMGC has partnered with Illumina to subsidize sequencing pilot projects, and also 10X Genomics to support single-cell pilot projects. Pilot projects can be for any NGS application on our website that uses 400 million reads of sequencing or less.

For this meeting, NanoString will take a technical deep dive into the similarities and differences between the GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler and CosMx Spatial Molecular Imager. Dr. Jerid Robinson, Field Application Scientist, will discuss sample prep, data analysis, GeoMx and CosMx comparison, and how to optimize your experimental design.

Join Illumina for office hours on Monday, January 30th, from 10am – 2pm in CCRB lunchroom atrium. Schedule some time with Illumina experts to discuss how we can support your genomics project whether you are new to next-generation sequencing, or have questions on any step in the workflow from library preparation, to sequencing, or data analysis. We are available to help further your research with the power of the genome. 

From large-scale sample acquisition and processing, to fragile or dying cells that are easily damaged during handling, many ambitious Single cell studies face frustrating logistical issues. Fixed RNA Profiling was developed to overcome these challenges, allowing you to preserve biology at the point of collection. In our upcoming seminar, we’re focusing on sample prep for this new assay.

Singular Genomics will present the capabilities of the new G4 sequencing instrument to the UMN research community, and the latest data on a wide variety of research applications like RNA-Seq and Single Cell RNA-Seq. The G4 is an innovative benchtop sequencing platform with novel, high-performance chemistry, and advanced engineering optimized for speed and flexibility.

Niedernhofer Lab (iBAM) will present on how cellular senescence is implicated in the accumulation of fibrosis and progressive liver dysfunction with aging and disease. To characterize liver senescence in normal and diseased liver, they compared two spatial transcriptomics platforms, Nanostring GeoMx and 10X Genomics Visium.

The UMGC Innovation Lab, in collaboration with the Biosensing and Biorobotics Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has developed an automated microinjection robot for Drosophila embryos that has the potential to dramatically increase the scale at which microinjection can be performed.