Infrastructure

The TRUGen Applied Genomics Laboratory officially opened in December 2017, thanks to funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and partnerships with ThermoFisher Scientific, DMark Biosciences and Agilent.

Building on more than five years of experience with the Ion Torrent and, more recently, the Oxford Nanopore MinION long-read sequencing platform, TRUGen is co-located with the Biocatalyst and Bioproducts Development Facility and the Proteomics and Protein Purification Laboratory. As such, we have end-to-end microbiological, molecular, proteomic, analytical and sequencing capacity.

Sequencing platforms

• Ion S5 XL System (high throughput sequencing up to 600 bp; up to 130M 200 bp reads per run)
• Oxford Nanopore MinION (ultra-long read sequencing)
• Ion Torrent PGM

PCR and qPCR

• SimpliAmp Thermal Cyclers
• QuantStudio3 Real-Time PCR (qPCR)
• S1000 Thermal Cycler
• Illumina Eco real time PCR

Sequencing library preparation

• Kingfisher Duo Prime (DNA, RNA, protein extraction)
• Covaris M220 Focused-ultrasonicator (physical DNA shearing)
• BluePippin (DNA size selection up to 50 kb)
• 2100 Bioanalyzer (quality control)
• Ion Chef

Fermentation capacity

• Four 14-L autoclavable stirred tank reactors that have been modified to operate at temperatures up to 90 C° pH, temperature, DO2 and foam control; 4-gas mixer
• Six 1-L airlift bioreactors
• Orbital shakers
• CO2 incubators
• Biological safety cabinet
• Tissue culture roller drums
• Ultra-low temperature freezer
• Anaerobic gas manifold

Proteomics and protein purification

• Two-Dimensional Difference Gel Electrophoresis (DIGE) System
• Protein Purification System
• Typhoon FLA 9500 Laser Activated Fluorescence Imager
• Robotic Spot Picker

Analytical instrumentation

TRUGen houses a gas chromatograph with Flame Ionization Detector, Electron Capture Detector and Pulsed Flame Photometric Detector, as well as a CombiPAL autosampler for liquid, headspace and Solid Phase Micro Extraction injections.

TRUGen has access to:

• Agilent Quadrupole Time-Of-Flight Liquid Chromatography/ Mass Spectrometry (Q-TOF LC/MS) System
• 500 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
• Gas Chromatography — Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) System
• Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization-Time of Flight (MALDI-TOF) Mass Spectrometer