Crown Institute for Genomics

Vision

Combining the innovation of the Weizmann Institute with cutting edge industry standards and state-of-the-art DNA and RNA Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, we aspire to become Israel’s leading genomic studies collaboration center. Aiming to become more than a service provider, our goal is to combine our sequencing services with research and development focused at overcoming the bottlenecks and limitations associated with assay development, automation, and data analysis. Taken together, these capabilities will help turn the INCPM into a unique single entity capable of partnering with researchers on all levels of study, boosting Israel’s position in this rapidly developing field of research.

Mission

Today, the challenge and bottleneck for genomics is to efficiently and reproducibly generate barcoded samples from low input (potentially single cells) in a high-throughput, preferably automated manner, while keeping down the cost of samples. Our mission is to innovate and create a leading center for genomic sample preparation for applications such as RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq, ncRNA-Seq, Exome-Seq, etc. The unit has already started to transition manual protocols to automated library preparation protocols devised and implemented in many laboratories around the world and at the Weizmann Institute and is diligently working towards reducing the amount of DNA necessary for input by 100x-1000x via sophisticated barcoding techniques developed in several laboratories.The challenge of streamlining sequencing applications also requires novel ideas and expertise in molecular biology techniques, engineering, automation, and optimization, smart statistical and computational-experimental design, and know-how in algorithmic design, analytic techniques, and software engineering. A key part of the genomic unit’s efforts will be dedicated to bringing together researchers with such expertise to devise practical and cost-effective sequencing-based experimental and computational pipelines.