[IIGB_All] Your input is crucial

[Karine Le Roch]

Dear Katie and IIGB faculty, 

While I think both the Nanopore GridION and the Orbitrap ASCEND would be great additions to the cores, the question posed to the faculty in the survey/vote did not contain all the information needed to make an informed decision.

Hence, before the faculty vote on how best to use the lottery funds, I would like to let the IIGB faculty know what we accomplished this past year while Xuemei was the IIGB interim director while Katie was on sabbatical. 

As many of you know, our Genomics core was outdated and nonfunctional. Xuemei, together with Julia, the staff at the core and myself, generated a list of instruments that were critical to reviving the core.

The NextSeq2000, together with other smaller instruments, were listed as essential for the day-to-day activity of the core and are the bread and butter of the Genomics core.  

Xuemei, together with Weifeng Gu and Sean O’Leary, managed to secure new NIH funding to bring to the core 1) a new Typhoon RGB Imager, 2) a new Luminometer (Plate reader); and 3) a Tapestation (similar as Qsep 100). 

Please join me in thanking Xuemei,  Weifeng Gu and Sean O’Leary for their hard work!

In addition, Xuemei, Julia and I lobbied the upper administration and secured additional funds ($530K, aka lottery funds) for the Genomics Core, including funds for the NextSeq2000. 

These funds will modernize the Genomics Core and make it truly functional once again.

This is critical for the success of many faculty on campus as well as our PhD students (lottery funds can only be spent on items that benefit the students)

With the lottery funds we can also purchase small instruments essential for sample preparation (Bioruptor) as well as the nanopore for long read sequencing. 

We have a critical decision to make now:

If the IIGB faculty decide to get the Orbitrap ASCEND (over 1 million dollars) with the funds initially targeted for the Genomics Core, there will be no money left for any small instruments nor any new sequencing platforms.

Please keep in mind that we cannot get small instruments through instrument grants.

In short, by diverting the lottery funds to the new mass spectrometer, the Genomics core will be nonfunctional and would eventually disappear. 

Furthermore, after several years without a fulltime Academic Coordinator for the Genomics Core, we finally recruited Dr. Wei Zhang, Ph.D. 

 Julia Bailey-Serres, Sydney Glassman, Quinn McFrederick and I, were part of the search committee, and we were thrilled to recruit Wei to UCR this Spring.

If you have not met Wei yet, please take some time to do so now. She is fantastic!

Wei and I already submitted a new NIH instrument Grant for a NOVAseq platform.

With proper instrumentation in the Genomics Core, Wei will be  able to enable all of our research.

 I am sure she will be happy to help any of us with additional instrumentation grants.  

We worked hard this past year to convince the upper admin of the importance of reviving the Genomics Core. If we do not take this opportunity now, it will not come again and I fear that the Genomics Core will disappear altogether. In contrast, a new mass spectrometer can be funded through instrumentation grants as noted above.

Thank you all for your support,

Best,

Karine


> On Aug 26, 2022, at 11:55 AM, Katayoon Dehesh <katayoon.dehesh at ucr.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
>  
> The Dean informed me yesterday that the total lottery funds awarded to IIGB is $530K.  This money can be spent for the purchase of any instrumentations with greater impacts on teaching and research activities, albeit with a more focused view on the teaching outcome.
>  
> There are two groups of instruments that fulfill the required criteria for the funds:
>  
>   10X Chromium: an instrument for single-cell genomics, bundled with GridION, a high-throughput long-read sequencer.
>  
> Orbitrap ASCEND mass spectrometer for high resolution proteomics and metabolomics.  For this instrument we will need an extra 100K,  however the Dean added that we will go to the provost to secure the amount.
>  
>  
> Rather than making a unilateral decision, I am reaching out to ask for your input. It is important that we purchase the instrument with highest impact for most of our community. To better assess your needs, I am sending the link below where you can state the choice of your preferred instrument. 
>  
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dR_moNhfllQmImap9_ik_CDHWDhE7cYzB56kLVKqB_4/edit?usp=sharing <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dR_moNhfllQmImap9_ik_CDHWDhE7cYzB56kLVKqB_4/edit?usp=sharing>
>  
>  
> Please provide your responses not later than the next Thursday September 1st.  I will let you know outcome.
>  
> Be powerful and thanks in advance for your input.
>  
> Katie
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh
> Director, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, Distinguished Professor
> Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair in Botany and Plant Sciences
> University of California, Riverside, CA 92521
> Phone: (951) 827-6370;  Fax: (951) 827-5155
>  
>  
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K.  Le Roch, PhD
Professor of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology
Director Center for Infectious Disease and Vector Research
Institute for Integrative Genome Biology
Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology (MCSB)
University of California Riverside
900 University Avenue
Multidisciplinary Research Building (MRB) Room 3139
Riverside, CA 92521, USA
Phone office: (1) 951 827 54 22
Phone Lab: (1) 951 827 5934
Web Site:  http://www.lerochlab.ucr.edu/



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