Grant application costings
College policy requires that grant applications to use the sequencing facility includes the cost of consumables, service contract and staff time. Remember that 80% of the effort is in the analysis of the data and you are responsible for ensuring that the analysis is within the capability of you or your collaborators. If you require additional bioinformatic support this must be agreed in full before grants are submitted.
Calculating costs
To help you calculate the full economic cost of your project, please contact Aaron Jeffries with the following:
- Type of sequencing (e.g. mRNA-seq, genomic etc), read length, number of samples per lane and whether or not you require paired-end reads.
- Eukaryote or prokaryote and whether there is a reference sequence and annotation available.
- Analysis required (whether you expect the sequencing service to analyse your data or have your own expertise available).
- The funding body you are applying to
Please copy Aaron Jeffries in to any correspondence and include details of your project and in particular, how you plan to analyse data.
Resource description
The following text may be used as part of grant applications to outline the current sequencing and informatics capabilities at Exeter:
The University of Exeter Sequencing Facility operates one Illumina Novaseq 6000, one Illumina MiSeq, one Promethion 24 and several Oxford Nanopore MinION devices. Experimental design, library construction and sequencer operations are supported by two FTE Experimental Officers, one FTE senior technician and two junior technicians.
In addition one FTE Experimental Officer provides informatics support for experimental design, laboratory and sequencer operations as well as downstream analysis.
Compute Resource is offered by the University’s new HPC environment (Isca). It represents a £3m investment by the University, and is designed to serve the advanced computing requirements of all research disciplines. Isca combines a traditional HPC cluster with a virtualised cluster environment, providing a range of node types in a single machine, and as such is the first of its kind in a UK University.
The Exeter Sequencing Facility team apply high standard quality control measures on each sequencing run being carried out in the facility using a purpose-built Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) for sample tracking, from receipt to sequence delivery. All our sequencers are covered by extensive warranties and undergo regular preventative maintenance. Our pipettes undergo regular calibrations. ISO9001 accreditation is not feasible for our research lab.
In the rapidly evolving field of genomics our aim is to assist scientists perform up to date quality experiments in a cost-efficient manner. First, we focus on optimization of library preparation protocols including controls and using sequencing metrics to improve service delivery; second, we develop custom designed functional genomics assays for a wide range of aims and objectives and third, we provide training and consultancy to enable a successful genomics project from start to end (including planning, sample management, experimental pipelines and bioinformatics analysis).
For commercial projects, overall management of framework agreements from an institutional perspective would be carried out by personnel employed within the University of Exeter’s Innovation, Impact & Business (IIB) Directorate, who will work closely with both the Exeter Sequencing Facility external to ensure delivery of tasks commissioned under the framework are delivered to the expected quality standards. IIB is responsible for the management of a large number of third-party funded research and consultancy contracts, and as such has rigorous contract management systems and processes in place, which have been ISO9001 accredited by BSI (certificate available upon request).
