The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved funding for the Genome Center, established in 2013, as one of four Competence Centres for High-Throughput Sequencing. The DFG announced its decision on 16th March 2018. It will be equipped with “Next Generation Sequencing” technology (NGS for short) and will receive a total of 14 million EURO in funding for an initial three-year period.
The cooperative project of Technische Universität Dresden and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) was founded in 2013. DCGC is an amalgamation of employees of the TU Dresden and MPI-CBG, as well as of the Center for Systems Biology Dresden and the DFG Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), a Cluster of Excellence at TU Dresden, which leads to a successful bundling of the Dresden-based expertise in the field of gene sequencing. Just last week, the DRESDEN-concept Genome Center has established an internal partnership under civil law (German: Innengesellschaft), that guarantees that genome analysis processes and methods are made available to as many scientists within the DRESDEN-concept research alliance as possible.
NGS allows for the genome, epigenome and transcriptome of a biological sample to be recorded and quantified in its entirety. Due to the data intensity of this method – the latest devices generate up to 6 Terabyte of data in less than two days – and the resulting complexity of bioinformatic analyses, it is evident that the widest possible spectrum of services for a plethora of scientific users, must include bioinformatic advice prior the utilisation and during the evaluation of data.
It is the DFG’s view that this also constitutes the added value when used by academic institutions, since high-quality sequencing services geared towards very diverse scientific questions, often cannot currently be effectuated by commercial solutions or providers. At the DRESDEN-concept Genome Center, these services and the support are offered and can be expanded through funding.