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The University of Southampton
Institute for Life Sciences

Next Generation Sequencing Symposium 2016

Published: 20 May 2016

On 18th of May, more than 200 delegates attended the University's 6th Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Symposium hosted at the Southampton General Hospital campus.

This whole-day meeting brought together scientists from across the Wessex region, from a wide range of fields, with an interest in using the latest DNA sequencing technologies.

The interdisciplinary programme included presenters from the NHS, Public Health England, as well as colleagues from across the University of Southampton. Topics ranged from sequencing viruses and oceanic life forms, to the current progress towards new high throughput sequencing technologies.

The plenary talk from Dr Chris Tyler-Smith (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) covered some exciting aspects of African genomics and its relation to human evolution and migration.

As part of the programme, early career researcher delegates were invited to apply for the Institute for Life Sciences (IfLS) sponsored prize of £2,000 for NGS research. The IfLS prize money was offered to support our participation in the BBSRC Excellence with Impact programme (FioNA). Preliminary applications were shortlisted and four applicants were given just three minutes to pitch their proposal. The audience chose Dr Andrew Douglas, a clinical lecturer in Genetic Medicine as the winner. His project entitled “Seq-ing the cure to motor neurone disease” was uniquely presented in rhyme, and gathered praise from the audience.

I'm very grateful to the symposium organisers for giving me the opportunity to pitch my proposal - and to the audience for voting for my project! It's a great opportunity to be able to build NGS data into my motor neuron disease research as I'll be able to find out a lot more about how my model system works and how it's affected by the molecules I'm testing.

Dr Andrew Douglas - Clinical Lecturer in Genetic Medicine
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