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As the group leader of finishing at the Genome Sequencing Center (GSC), my focus is the improvement of DNA sequence. The high-throughput sequencing pipeline is able to produce amazing quantities of sequence data through a highly automated production pipeline, but unfortunately due to the complex nature of DNA sequencing, the resulting product across all regions of genomes is not well represented in all cases. The process of resolving ambiguities, closing gaps, and improving quality of these initial assemblies is my focus. With budgets being tight, and production throughput being so robust and diverse, speed, flexibility, and efficiency of methods are critical. Improvement work can be performed on whole genomes consisting of billions of base pairs to clone based activities as small as thousands of base pairs. Efforts for improvement of these procedures span many aspects of the sequencing pipeline, including sequencing chemistry and assembly algorithm improvements, as well as automated assembly manipulation and reaction selection programs. These improvements have come through close interaction between many groups at the GSC including technical development, production and informatics, as well as outside collaborations with many different groups. These higher throughput mechanisms have been developed in support of manual improvements on some genomes, which require strict quality standards, while also being applied to genomes as a mechanism of high throughput improvement where minimal manual efforts are called for. In either case, the sequence improvement pipeline provides downstream users with a more complete, higher quality product, enabling them to glean as much useful information out of the sequence data as possible.
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I'm married with two lovely daughters. I enjoy keeping up with my daughters' hectic schedules, and have the pleasure of working with my wife Lucinda, who oversees the production process at the GSC. In my spare time I enjoy many sporting activities with a true passion for tournament bass fishing.
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