The Genome Analysis Centre

The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC)

File:The Genome Analysis Centre Logo.png
Established	3 July 2009
Field of research	Genomics Computational bioscience
Director	Prof Neil Hall
Address	Norwich Research Park
Location	Colney, Norfolk, England
Zip code	NR4 7UH
Affiliations	Norfolk County Council Norwich City Council South Norfolk Council
Operating agency	Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Website	www.tgac.ac.uk

The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) is a life science research centre located at the Norwich Research Park (NRP), Norwich, England. TGAC's research areas include bioinformatics, computational biology, host pathogen interaction, plant and microbial genomics, vertebrate health and infrastructure development among others.

History

It was established by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in partnership with East of England Development Agency (EEDA), Norfolk County Council, Norwich City Council, South Norfolk Council and the Greater Norwich Development Partnership. It cost £13.5 million, and was built by Morgan Sindall. It was officially opened on 3 July 2009 by John Sulston, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and former Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, another genomics research institution.

In early June 2011, it unveiled a supercomputer on its site that has the most powerful processor in the world that runs Red Hat Linux, with six terabytes of RAM. It was installed to crack the structure of the wheat genome, which is five times larger than the human genome.

Launched MISO (Managing Information for Sequencing Operations).

Structure

It is situated on the Norwich Research Park, to the west of Norwich on the former A47 (B1108), and adjacent to the west of the University of East Anglia, next to the River Yare.

Function

The goal of this research centre is to be at the forefront of data intensive science in biology, to be a leader in bioinformatics innovation and the application of genome technology and to enable bioscience through dissemination of the data and technology produced in the institute and in collaboration with external scientists worldwide. It concentrates on wheat and ryegrass.

Directors

The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) has been directed by:

• Jane Rogers from July 2009 to October 2012;
• Mario Caccamo from November 2013 to May 2015;
• Prof Dylan Edwards from July 2015 (Interim Director)
• Prof Neil Hall from April 2016 (Current Director)

Communicating Science

One of the responsibilities of TGAC is to communicate the science it undertakes to a range of audiences, such as the international scientific community, the general public, school children, and students. It runs various programmes throughout the year to deliver this responsibility. TGAC further communicate their work on their blog.

Facilities

Sequencing Platforms

TGAC is equipped with next-generation sequencing and genomics platforms for high-throughput data generation for research projects. TGAC historically has been an early adopter of new technologies for its scientific research, but also makes these available to other research groups.

• Illumina HiSeq2000/2500/4000
• Illumina MiSeq
• Thermo Fisher Scientific Ion Proton
• PacBio RSII
• PacBio Sequel
• Oxford Nanopore MinION
• BioNano Genomics Irys
• OpGen Argus
• 10X Chromium

Computing Platform

TGAC deploys and maintains leading edge high-performance computing resources that help keep the UK at the forefront of genomics and computational bioscience. Our heterogeneous computing environment allows researchers to exploit distributed-memory and large shared-memory supercomputers along with GPU, Xeon-Phi and FPGA accelerators, to tackle any computational challenge.

System	Compute Blades	Sockets per Blade	Cores per Socket	Total Cores	Memory Capacity per Blade	Total Memory Capacity	Accelerators	Interconnect	Local Filesystem Storage	Operating System	Scheduler
SGI UV2000	176	2	8 (Intel Eight-core SandyBridge E5-4650L @ 2.6 GHz)	2816	128GB	22 Terabytes	32 x Xeon-Phi 5110P. 8GB RAM and 60 cores per Phi @ 1.1GHz	Numalink 6	110TB CXFS Scratch Space	RHEL 6.4	PBS
SGI UV100 (x2)	48	2	8 (Intel Eight-Core Xeon E7-8837 @ 2.66 GHz)	768	128GB	6 Terabytes		Numalink 5	110TB CXFS Scratch Space	RHEL 6.4	PBS
AMD Opteron Cluster	60	4	8 (AMD Opteron ‘Magny-Cour’ @ 2.3 GHz)	1920	56x128GB, 4x256GB	8 Terabytes	6 x Xeon-Phi 5110P. 8GB RAM and 60 cores per Phi @ 1.1GHz, Tesla GPUs	1/10 GB/s Ethernet	216GB local disk per node, 6x 512GB SSD	CentOS v5/6	LSF

External links

• The Genome Analysis Centre Website