AGRF, IMB and APBiotech Collaborate

The Australian Genomic Research Facility (AGRF) has announced ongoing co-operation between AGRF and Amersham Pharmacia Biotech (APBiotech).

APBiotech has agreed to fund a PhD studentship to the value of $75,000 over three years. The PhD student will be registered in the IMB and be supervised by Dr Ian Findlay based at the Australian Genome Research Facility at the University of Queensland.

The PhD project entitled 'High Throughput Genetic Analysis of Limited Numbers of Cells' will use Amersham's capability electrophoresis high throughput DNA sequencing system, the MegaBACE.

The analysis of small numbers of cells has enormous potential in many scientific disciplines including genetic diagnosis of disease and DNA fingerprinting of single cells in forensics. However, current techniques are very time intensive, severely limiting applications. High throughput systems have the capability of providing new platforms for genetic testing.

These platforms could then be adapted to an infinite number of cell lineages adding another tool to the increasingly problematic area of medical genetic diagnosis.

This PhD project will optimise the isolation and high-throughput analysis of very small numbers of cells in an efficient, wide-ranging and cost-effective manner.