George Weinstock, Washington University, to Keynote GTC’s NGS Meeting, Jun. 19-21, San Francisco

Monrovia, CA, February 24, 2013 --(PR.com)-- George Weinstock, professor at Washington University at St. Louis, will give a keynote presentation on “The Microbiome, Infectious Diseases, and NGS” at GTC’s 3rd Next Generation Sequencing Conference on June 19–21, in San Francisco, CA

The last few years have seen a revolution in microbiology due to NGS. The Human Microbiome Project and metagenomic analysis, previously stymied by the requirement for large-scale sequencing of complex microbial communities, was unblocked by applications of 454 and Illumina platforms in 16S rDNA and shotgun sequencing, respectively. These are also playing a major role in virome analysis, revealing new patterns of virus infection in humans. Complementing this analysis of microbial communities is the sequencing of individual species in pure culture. This has been applied to outbreak strains, population genetics, sub-species analysis, and other applications and is transforming our knowledge of microbes. Examples of all of these applications will be presented as well as speculation on the trajectory for the future.

Dr. George Weinstock is currently Professor of Genetics and Professor of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University at St. Louis. He was one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project and also the first personal genome project, sequencing Dr. James Watson’s genome using next-generation sequencing technology. He is now a leader of the Human Microbiome Project, studying the collection of microbes that colonize the human body.

The 3rd Next Generation Sequencing Conference will provide a forum for industry, academic and government leaders in the field to present on the current and future applications of the technology as well as share strategies, best practices and protocols on the usage of the tool. Hot topics that will be covered include clinical diagnostics development, the microbiome and infectious disease applications, bioinformatics and methods of data analysis, nanopore sequencing and other future sequencing technologies on the horizon.

This conference is part of the Nucleic Acid Summit and will run parallel with the 4th RNAi Research & Therapeutics Conference.

For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com/sequencing