July 18, 2017, Copenhagen, Denmark and Beijing, China - The Global Ant Genomics Alliance (GAGA; http://antgenomics.dk/), an international collaboration of researchers from a variety of fields and institutions from across the globe, is partnering with Novogene Co., LTD, a leading global provider of genomic services and solutions, to make a significant leap forward in understanding the genomics of ants.
The partnership aims to obtain around 300 genomes, covering all ant genera across the world, to facilitate reconstruction of the evolutionary history and ecological resilience of this important social insect family. Under the partnership Novogene will provide PacBio sequencing for the ant species collected by the GAGA consortium and deliver high quality long-reads data, with up to 50x coverage generating 15 gigabases of long-read data for each ant genome.
"PacBio sequencing technology will allow almost gap-less genome assemblies that should make sure that ant genomes generated under GAGA will meet future quality standards of journals and repositories," said Guojie Zhang, professor at the University of Copenhagen and head of the GAGA consortium. "The technology also requires only small amounts of DNA, significantly alleviating the biomass constraints for sampling material and enabling genome sequencing for almost all rare and small ants."
"We are pleased to be partnering with The Global Ant Genomics Alliance on this important research endeavor," said Dr. Ruiqiang Li, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Novogene. "By applying our PacBio sequencing capabilities to the project we look forward to generating a robust database on the ant genome and helping advance the knowledge and understanding of this diverse species."
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About Novogene
Novogene is a leading provider of genomic services and solutions with cutting edge NGS and bioinformatics expertise and one of the largest sequencing capacities in the World. Novogene pursues scientific excellence, strong commitment to customer service, and unsurpassed data quality to help our clients realize their research goals in the rapidly developing world of genomics. With 1,800 employees, multiple locations around the world, 49 NGS related patents, and over 250 publications in top-tier journal such as Nature and Science, Novogene has rapidly become a world-leader in NGS services. For more information, visit http://en.novogene.com/.
About The Global Ant Genomics Alliance
The Global Ant Genome Project is a growing international collaboration of researchers from a variety of fields and institutions across the world. This global project on ant genomics will provide a comprehensive dataset of the genomic diversity of the world's ant genera. Based on the comparative analysis of these data, we will be able to understand the global trends of ant evolution and narrow down the genetic features that have been particularly relevant for the diversification and astonishing evolutionary success of ants. Researchers are interested in joining the consortium can submit their research interest via http://antgenomics.dk/call-for-gaga-projects-and-subprojects/. For more information, see https://myrmecologicalnews.org/cms/index.php?option=com_download&view=downl%20oad&filename=volume25/mn25_61-66_printable.pdf&format=raw
Contact:
Joyce Peng, Ph.D.
Global Marketing Director and General Manager
Novogene Corporation
+1-626-222-5584
joyce.peng@novogene.com