This week marks the 40th annual meeting of the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, better known in the community as ASHI. The PacBio® team is looking forward to attending; after all, several organizations are now using Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT®) Sequencing specifically for resolving the incredibly complex genetic regions related to histocompatibility.
Earlier this year, we announced that two leading HLA typing institutions had adopted SMRT Sequencing to untangle this highly polymorphic set of genes: Anthony Nolan, a UK-based blood cancer charity that started the world’s first bone marrow registry, and HistoGenetics, a pioneer that has used sequence-based typing to characterize HLA regions in more than 14 million samples. We’re pleased to report that scientists from both organizations will be giving presentations at our ASHI workshop, Advances in Fully Phased HLA & KIR Typing Using SMRT® Sequencing.
The workshop will be held Wednesday, October 22, from noon to 2:00 p.m. Click here to register for the event or to request a recording if you won’t be at the Denver conference. Here are the speakers and topics:
The Challenge of HLA Diversity in 2014
Prof. Steve Marsh, Anthony Nolan Research Institute & University College London
Clinical HLA Typing on PacBio Platform
Nezih Cereb, M.D., President & CEO, Histogenetics
KIR Haplotypes: The Long and Short of It
Martin Maiers, Ph.D., Director, Bioinformatics Research, National Bone Marrow Donor Program
There are also a number of presentations and posters during the ASHI conference that will highlight the utility of SMRT Sequencing for characterizing the HLA complex, and we encourage attendees to stop by booth #307 to learn more.
Podium presentations:
Tuesday, October 21
Session: New & Improved NGS
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
OR01: Automated Assembly of Complex Immunogenetic Haplotypes Using Long-Read, Single Molecule, Real-Time Sequencing of Fosmids
Richard J. Hall, Ph.D., Pacific Biosciences, Menlo Park, CA
OR05: Complete Resequencing of Extended Genomic Regions Using Fosmid Target Capture and Single Molecule Real-Time (SMRT®) Long Read Sequencing Technology
Daniel Geraghty, Ph.D., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA
Thursday, October 23
Session: Scholar Awards
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
OR59: Generation of 252 HLA Class I Genomic Sequences in a Single Sequencing Reaction Using DNA Barcodes and Single Molecule Real-Time (SMRT) DNA Sequencing Technology
Dr. Neema P. Mayor, Anthony Nolan, London, United Kingdom; UCL Cancer Institute, London, United Kingdom
Posters:
LBP04: Application of Single Molecule Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing Technology for the Field 4 Level Genotyping of Classical HLA Loci
LBP07: Evaluation of Multiplexing Strategies for HLA Genotyping Using PacBio Sequencing Technologies
Please note: the PacBio RS II system is intended for Research Use Only and not for use in diagnostic procedures.