7th Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Symposium
Scientists from across the Wessex region with a wide range of interests in using the latest DNA sequencing technologies attended the University's 7th Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Symposium hosted at the Southampton General Hospital campus.
The interdisciplinary programme included presenters from Public Health England, NHS and colleagues from across the University of Southampton. Topics ranged from sequencing Canary islands daisies and ancient DNA, to the current progress towards new high throughput sequencing technologies.
The plenary talk from Prof Saheer Gharbia (Public Health England) covered exciting aspects on the analysis and interpretation of the human microbiome data.
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. Preliminary applications were shortlisted and three applicants were given just three minutes to pitch their proposal. The audience chose Harriet Dale, a second year PhD student in Marine Ecology (NOC) as the winner. Her project entitled “Sequencing a marine worm’s microbiome” highlighted the importance of these invertebrates in controlling biogeochemical processes.
Thank you to the symposium organisers and audience members for this great opportunity to further incorporate NGS data into my sediment ecology PhD research! I'll now be able to more closely examine the influence of invertebrate microbiomes on sediment microbial diversity, and I'm excited to come back and attend next year.