Dec 6, 2010

"NGS without bioinformatics expertise"

This showed up in my inbox today:

Integromics launches SeqSolve, a Next Generation Sequencing functional ...
PharmaLive.com (press release)
SeqSolve is the first NGS analysis software on the market specifically developed for data interpretation without requiring bioinformatics expertise. ...

Might be a bit presumptious, but I would guess that a lot of scientists would like to have someone with "bioinformatics expertise" do data analysis for their Next-Gen Sequencing projects. But hey, if someone wants to spend $10-$50K on sequencing, but doesn't want an expert to look at the data, good luck with that. Our "Sequencing Informatics Group" at NYU is now taking outside consulting work for all types of NGS bioinformatics projects. It is sort of like fixing your Porche - you can go to the Foreign Car specialist mechanic, or you can go to PepBoys and buy some spark plugs and a wrench kit.

We (Ross Smith) have been developing our own visualization toolkit for NGS. Latest version allows us to integrate RNAseq and ChIPseq with RefSeq or other annotation. Net result is much more accurate assignment of TF or histone modification sites to genes, and the ability to clearly see which of multiple TSS are actually being used in a particular sample/cell type. It is very beautiful.