Partner 29 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI)
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI) sequenced 30% of the human genome and now focuses on understanding the role of genetics in health and disease. The WTSI is a world leader in uncovering the genetic basis of disease including infectious disease, providing results that are translated into diagnostics, treatments or therapies that reduce global health burdens. The WTSI is the largest genetics institute in the UK and Europe and is broadly divided into a number of main research areas including: human genetics, cancer genetics, model organism genetics, pathogen genetics and computational genomics. Pathogen genetics determines pathogen and host genetic variation and investigates the consequences of this variation on the biology of host-pathogen interactions linking these to disease phenotypes in experimental murine models and human populations. The virus genomics group investigates human pathogenic virus infections and the genetic determinants of disease pathogenesis and transmission including zoonotic virus infections. As part of UK national efforts the WTSI is sequencing the genomes of 40 000 bacteria and viruses directly from hospital diagnostic workflows and making these data publically available through the new Pathogen Surveillance Centre. Similarly the sequencing of large numbers of human genomes is uncovering genetic variants that alter the hosts response to infection. As such the WTSI is well placed to contribute to COMPARE. In particular, as an internationally recognised leader in Next Generation Sequence data generation and analysis on a range of sample types and pathogens the WTSI expertise in going from sample to accurate sequences and for generation of reference sequences across the different pathogens and population level analyses of host and pathogen genomes will be used in COMPARE. The experience of the WTSI and the Wellcome Trist in open data access will be relevant for identifying non-technological barriers to open data sharing.
Principle Investigator: David Aanensen,
da5@sanger.ac.uk