Hands-on training for UMR-sequencing

As part of this year's call for CBA Visiting Scientist funding, Diep Ganguly (Research School of Biology, ANU) proposed inviting Peter Crisp and Kimmy Zhang from the University of Queensland whose research focuses on crop functional genomics, epigenetics, and biotechnology, developing groundbreaking technologies for harnessing (epi)genetic variation and decoding genomes.

This week the CBA welcomed Peter and Kimmy to ANU to present a seminar and workshop which provided early access details and training on their new method, UMR-seq, allowing participants to cost-effectively identify regulatory regions in large genomes.

ANU students and researchers were fortunate to be also joined by those from CSIRO, UQ, and UTS, who worked together to produce UMR-seq libraries on diverse samples, including barley, cotton, stick insects, and waxy bluebells.

Many thanks to Diep for his leadership and hosting Peter and Kimmy, the CBA for their funding, to Claire Stephens, Niccy Aitken, and the BTLC team (especially Yiming Li) for their invaluable assistance in preparing for the workshop, to Pete and Kimmy for their willingness to brave the Canberra winter, and to all the attendees for coming along!