Biochemistry professor Michael Sussman is the principal investigator on a recently awarded UW2020 Round 4 project. Numerous other Biochemistry faculty are serving as co-principal investigators or collaborators on this and other UW2020 projects.
The awards represent the fourth round of UW2020 funded projects since the initiative was launched by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education. The goal of UW2020 is to stimulate and support cutting edge, highly innovative, and groundbreaking research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the acquisition of shared instruments or equipment that will open new avenues for innovative and significant research. UW2020 is underwritten by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) with combined funding from other sources.
Sussman’s project is titled “Acquisition of an Illumnina NovaSeq Next Generation DNA Sequencer for UW–Madison.” He is also the director of campus’s Biotechnology Center where the core facility for the operation of this instrument is located.
The project will help boost UW–Madison’s DNA sequencing capabilities as it supports the purchase of a “next generation” DNA sequencer, the Illumina NovaSeq. The new instrument is able to provide 15 times the sequence throughput at almost half the cost of campus’s older instrument. The instrument will help perform experiments for hundreds of laboratories all across campus.
DNA sequencing provides researchers with highly detailed information about the order of nucleotides within a DNA molecule. It is used for everything from forensics to disease treatment to genomics to basic molecular, cellular and organismal research in the biological sciences. It could help lead to the rapid diagnosis and individualized treatment of disease.
Also on the project as collaborators are Biochemistry faculty members Michael Cox, Aaron Hoskins, Robert Landick, Wesley Pike, Vatsan Raman, Philip Romero, and Marvin Wickens.
Other biochemistry faculty listed on awarded UW2020 fourth round projects include:
- Robert Lowery (department Ph.D. alumnus), Michael Sussman and Douglas Weibel, collaborators: Accelerating Lead Optimization to Clinical Application Using Microscale Thermophoresis to Quantify Molecular Interactions
- Dave Pagliarini, co-investigator: Advancing CRISPR-mediated Genome Editing Technology at UW–Madison to Model Human Disease
- Katherine Henzler-Wildman, collaborator: All-Optical Electrophysiology without Electrodes
- Alan Attie, collaborator: Building a Translational Research Pipeline to Personalize Diabetes Prevention and Treatment