Comments on: Again with Big Genomics http://www.chrisamiller.com/blog/2009/06/15/again-with-big-genomics/ politics, tech, humor, and science since 2002 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:09:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Gribskov http://www.chrisamiller.com/blog/2009/06/15/again-with-big-genomics/comment-page-1/#comment-812 Gribskov Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:21:05 +0000 http://www.chrisamiller.com/blog/?p=1841#comment-812 I don't think there is any such thing as an academic sequencing center. They are businesses that the federal government has (perversely) decided to support through research grants. That said, not-for-profit centers probably do much more research on new approaches/technologies and support a certain amount of speculative work that would not get done by for-profit companies. So if you want sequencing to continue to be used in novel ways, its probably good to have some. There is something to be said for the critical mass of talent idea. Part of the critical mass is people who are down-and-dirty with the technical details of the process. If all sequencing is contracted to companies, this will be lost to the university setting. I don’t think there is any such thing as an academic sequencing center. They are businesses that the federal government has (perversely) decided to support through research grants. That said, not-for-profit centers probably do much more research on new approaches/technologies and support a certain amount of speculative work that would not get done by for-profit companies. So if you want sequencing to continue to be used in novel ways, its probably good to have some.

There is something to be said for the critical mass of talent idea. Part of the critical mass is people who are down-and-dirty with the technical details of the process. If all sequencing is contracted to companies, this will be lost to the university setting.

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