Achievement

The second major outcome was explicit training in wet lab techniques for isolation of DNA and preparation of high throughput sequencing libraries. There were a series of lectures by IGERT faculty from Brown and MBL with expertise spanning microbial ecology to computational genomics on the background and concepts of these methods. Additional lectures were provided by the staff that runs the high throughput sequencing facility plus advanced graduate students with direct experience with these methods. In addition, the trainees spent time in the laboratory preparing the samples. The trainees had to work effectively with each other, and with external suppliers of the reagents, staff in the sequencing facility, and various personnel in different laboratories and departments to accomplish the final product of a high quality DNA library suitable for running on the Illumina HiSeq2000 instrument.