By Express News Service HYDERABAD: THE Centre For Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) received a state-of-the-art facility for its genomic studies division, which was inaugurated by Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on Saturday. The minister also laid the foundation stone for a new skill training and lecture hall complex on the occasion. The Next Generation Sequencing Facility promises to sequence up to 30 human genomes in a day and help researchers to individually tag genomes of up to 80,000 cells in eight minutes. Tej Sowpati, one of the youngest scientists at CCMB’s genomics department, explained: “Many cells comes together to form a tissue, but each of these cells is unique in its own way. The running cost of NGS facility NovaSeq Sequencer is Rs 30 lakh. However, the output is pretty good, as the sequencing of 30 genomes in a day is a very new feat in India. The other setup that we have is the chromium controller, that can take single cells from a tissue and tag them.” Stating the advantage of the NGS facility, he further said: “For example, take cases like cancer, where there is cell heterogeneity. You have lumps of cells within a cancerous tissue which might have completely different DNA content. Now we can study that too within a shorter span of time. This will lead to a better understanding of the disease and help researchers come up with enhanced solutions.”

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