Microbial Ecology

Microbiome and Amplicon Sequencing

Microbial Ecology has been revolutionized by DNA sequencing. We leverage the low per base cost of Illumina next gen sequencing and deep multiplexing (barcoding) to keep our per sample costs low. We offer both project or “fill the run” based sequencing. “Fill the run” means that we don’t have sample minimums, we will process samples from smaller projects together to keep the costs as low as possible. CGI offers several on-ramps for this analysis. Full service sample processing is available by combining DNA extraction with our amplicon library prep and amplicon sequencing which includes quantification, library prep, and sequencing at least 10,000 sequences per sample. We have custom, dual indexed library prepration primers for Bacterial v4 16S (HMP 515F/806R), Bacterial and Archaeal v4 16S (EMP 515F/806R), Fungal ITS2 (fITS7/ITS4), and user specified 2 step. 

Flow diagram of the microbial ecology sample procces. A picture of a block of soil is in the top left, a zoom arrow points towards a cartoon of multicolored, variable shaped cells -> Extract DNA (image of colored squiggly lines) -> Make lots of copies of target gene, add index (image of straight color lines with blue box index) -> Pool many samples (image of straight colored lines with blue and green index box) -> Sequence (image of Illumina bridge amplification) -> arrow into grey box "Bioinformatics-Intersection of biology and computers" -> Sort sequences by index -> OTU-operational taxonomic unit, proxy for species/genus