With the arrival of our PacBio Sequel IIe in our genomics laboratory in Pretoria late last year, we are now able to sequence and assemble large genomes as easy as never before in Africa. The long HiFi reads from the Sequel IIe system makes this possible.
To celebrate this exciting milestone for genome research at inqaba biotec and on the continent, we will offer to sequence for free genomes of 5 different species important to the biodiversity in sub-Saharan Africa. To make this even more interesting we sequence up to three different individuals of the selected species. This is important to make something meaningful out of these genome sequences. So it could be animals, plants, insects, fungi, bacteria, viruses and of course we consider humans part of the biodiversity as well.
While we ask scientists to submit proposals, we will ask the public to vote for the most preferred species at the later stage. So please keep tuning in. We are very excited to see the proposals.
Please visit our YouTube video for more details: Inqaba’s Africa Genome Challenge 2021