Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Video: Curious about Next Generation Sequencing?

Curious about Next Generation Sequencing? Check out this video to see how Illumina sequencing technology works. Don't forget to visit www.functionalbio.com for more information.

Next Generation Sequencing

Friday, October 5, 2012

Functional Bio goes PINK during October 2012



Visit our Facebook Page, Like us and Save!  It's that easy! 

For all of our customers who visit our Facebook page and Like us, you will instantly receive $10 off your next order.  Refer someone, and when they open an account and place an order, you receive an additional 5 free reactions!
Like us.....Refer us.....SAVE!

There's more!  Keep an eye out for monthly discounts to be posted exclusively on Facebook.   We will also be posting helpful hints for your sequencing, answering sequencing questions, hosting discussions, and even posting some science related comic relief.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Facebook Fan Monthly Special - October 2012




New customers up to 5 free DNA Sequencing reactions all October long for our Facebook Friends! Just visit our Facebook page, and click "Like" to be eligible to receive our monthly discounts and specials.  You must be a Facebook Friend to receive the discount. See details.

Twitter Fan Monthly Special - October 2012



New customers up to 5 free DNA Sequencing reactions all October long for our Twitter Followers! Just visit our Twitter page, and click "Follow" to be eligible to receive our monthly discounts and specials.  You must be a Twitter Follower to receive the discount. See details.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Why Next Generation Sequencing?

Next Generation sequencing greatly reduces the amount of space and time needed to sequence by the Sanger method. Next generation sequencing extends the process over millions of parallel reactions instead of being limited to only a few DNA fragments at a time. What used to take months to sequence now only takes a matter of days.

Functional Biosciences uses Illumina sequencing technology for all Next Generation Sequencing projects. Illumina uses proprietary Sequencing by Synthesis technology that supports massively parallel reactions. To do this, copies of single DNA molecules are bound to a solid surface (i.e. flow cell). Fluorescently labeled reverse chain terminators enable detection of single base as they are incorporated into a growing DNA chain. These fluorescent terminators are imaged as the terminator tagged dNTPs are added, and then are cleaved to allow the next base to be incorporated.

Sequencing of genomic material requires random fragmentation performed by sonication or nebulization to lengths necessary to prepare DNA libraries that will be bound to the flow cell. The reads that come off of the sequencer are pieced back together in downstream analysis and are mapped or assembled back to a known genome or transcriptome. There are also times where a reference genome is unavailable and de novo assembly is required.

NGS Applications:

  • Whole Genome Sequencing/Resequencing
  • Small Genome Sequencing/Resequencing
  • smallRNA discovery
  • Metagenomics
  • Gene regulation and protein binding
  • Transcriptomics
  • BAC, Cosmid, Fosmid, etc. Clone checking
  • And much more...