Conference season is going strong. Next on our list: the annual meeting of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities in Myrtle Beach, S.C. We never miss this conference — it’s a great event for tech-loving life science people like us. ABRF brings together hundreds of core lab managers from around the world to share novel protocols, results of instrument bake-offs, and best practices.
At ABRF, scientists offer a different perspective on tools than we get from individual researchers. Core labs have to run technologies at near-industrial capacity, with tons of effort going toward nailing down workflows and automation for the most consistent, reliable results possible. Many of the great advances in our area of interest, NGS sample prep, have come from the dedicated and methodical core lab scientists in this community. At this year’s conference, we’ll be attending many sessions in the genomics track, which will include presentations on single-cell sequencing, clinical NGS, CRISPR, and bioinformatics.
We’re also looking forward to the high-level talks. Amos Bairoch from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics will be honored with the 2018 ABRF Award Lecture for Outstanding Contributions to Biomolecular Technologies, a talk that promises to cover highlights from a remarkable career in protein analysis. There will be an interesting opening keynote address from Howard McLeod of the Moffitt Cancer Center entitled “Precision Medicine: Nice Start, But A Long Way to Go.”
If you’ll be attending ABRF, please stop by booth #103 in the exhibit hall to visit the Sage team. We’d be happy to learn about your core lab and help you determine whether our automated DNA size selection instruments could be of assistance. And don’t miss poster #128, “Faster DNA Size-Selection for Long-Read Sequencing,” for a sneak peek at the new High-Pass Plus cassette for shorter run times and larger input samples on our BluePippin system.