Project Summary
Yale Center for Genome Analysis (YCGA) has been providing cutting-edge next-generation sequencing
services to support the fundamental research needs of hundreds of Yale and non-Yale NIH-funded
investigators. YCGA has been offering short read sequencing services to its users using various Illumina
systems since 2008. During the last 14 years, its use increased by 26-fold and has provided services to 1000+
users from 30 institutions annually at 80% of the equipment’s capacity. For YCGA to continue to serve the
need of its ever-increasing number of users, the current HiSeq 2500 must be replaced with a new mid
throughput sequencer, the AVITI system.
The primary justifications for this request are the following: an urgent and compelling need to replace our
existing medium-throughput Illumina HiSeq 2500 sequencing systems, which are more than seven years old
and functionally obsolete (since these systems will not be supported by Illumina anymore), and a need to
reduce the turnaround time of data delivery for user prepared, R&D, and single-cell genomics samples.
Moreover, the requested equipment is cost-effective and has sufficient throughput to support the projects cited
in this application and beyond in supporting the needs of the growing number of investigators wanting to use
this cost-effective, cutting-edge technology.
Twenty-nine investigators support our request for funding the AVITI system with apt justifications. They
propose to use the AVITI system to study the roles of variants, identification, development of new genomics-
based technologies, analysis of single expression and chromatin accessibility at a single-cell level, epigenetic
changes in psychiatric, cardiovascular, skin, infectious diseases, and cancer.
The strengths of this proposal include: (1) An efficient and effective centralized facility serves an extraordinarily
diverse and productive investigator user base. (2) The extensive experience of the PI. (3) The extensive
infrastructure and expertise are available to bring the requested instrumentation online and oversee its
continuous use.
Yale University has made a significant investment in capital and institutional talent to build a world-class
genomic center that has proven highly successful. The requested instrumentation will leverage the
infrastructure to ensure its high value and broad impact on NIH-funded biomedical and basic research within
and beyond the Yale community.