Laboratory of genomics and metagenomics

The laboratory of genomics and metagenomics has started its activity in January 2012, thanks to an Institutional support. The current team, led by Prof Greub, mainly includes 3 bioinformaticians and one lab technician. However, several other investigators of the diagnostic and research laboratories are actively participating to the development of this young diagnostic laboratory. The laboratory is currently using an Illumina MiSeq system to perform most next generation sequencing tasks, taking advantage of both local CHUV computing facilities as well as those from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

The main objective of this laboratory is to provide an efficient and rapid tool to sequence microbial genomes, mainly bacterial, and to provide key informations on strains relatedness (typing), virulence factors (virulome) and/or resistance to antibiotics (resistome) within a few days. In addition to these fundamental aspects, genomic analysis is used to identify genes as targets for molecular diagnosis (see R&D), as well as to provide metagenomic data for research and/or diagnostic purposes.

As a complement, we have a functional genomics facility to study the biological impact of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identifed by sequencing.

Prices of these investigations are highly dependent on the number of analyses and type of sample/microbial species. Information on prices may be obtained upon request to the lab technicians.