In an effort to help fight tuberculosis on the African continent, CLC bio has joined forces with the first centre for High Throughput DNA Sequencing in Africa, Inqaba Biotechnical Industries (Pty) Ltd. Together CLC bio and Inqaba Biotec will assemble and analyse data from multiple tuberculosis strains, sequenced on Inqaba Biotec's Genome Sequencer FLX system.
CLC bio, is in the final stage of development of their upcoming CLC Genomics Workbench, which is a new workbench aimed at next generation sequencing and whole genome assembly. The new workbench will support all next generation sequencing platforms, such as Roche GS FLX (454), Illumina Gene Analyzer System (Solexa), and SOLiD Analyzer from Applied Biosystems from the start - with Helicos and others to be included in the near future.
Dr. Oliver Preisig, executive director, Inqaba Biotechnical Industries, said, 'The consortium's goal is to find the genetic differences between different strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We target our genome sequencing on XDR (Extreme Drug Resistant) and MDR (Multi Drug Resistant) strains of the bacterium. Having assembled the genomes of these strains we can find the strains' specific markers and develop a PCR test that could bring much faster diagnosis for proper treatment. This means we have an urgent need for whole genome sequencing, and look forward to CLC bio's upcoming workbench, which will provide an intuitive and fast solution.'
The South African Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome sequencing project is funded by BioPAD, a biotechnology investment trust funded by the Department of Science and Technology of South Africa and includes as consortium members the Chris Hani Baragwanath business unit of the National Health Laboratory Services, the Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of Witwatersrand and inqaba biotec.
Dr. Roald Forsberg, senior scientific officer, CLC bio, said, 'We are really exited to join forces with inqaba biotec in their Tubercolosis research programme. The large amount of genomic data inqaba biotec produces offers us an exciting opportunity to test and fine tune our algorithms on real and challenging data - and at the same time it allows us to contribute to the ongoing fight against Tuberculosis. This is a great motivation to our developer team.'
The upcoming CLC Genomics Workbench will among other things feature an SIMD accelerated genome assembler, and will take full advantage of "paired ends" data. CLC bio will release CLC Genomics Workbench in the spring.