CEFAS21-86 C-19 Sequencing Services

The procurement contact named on the official notice.

Cefas is expanding the government’s environmental sequencing capability as part of the EMHP programme led by JBC to increase SARS-CoV-2 sequencing from wastewater and to build capacity for wider environmental monitoring in the longer term.

To facilitate this expansion in sequencing, Cefas is establishing a new wastewater sequencing facility in Exeter.

This facility will be equipped with two Illumina NextSeq 550 and a Beckman Coulter Biomek i7 along with other robotics and molecular biology equipment.

The new sequencing facility will be co-located with the Environment Agency’s (EA) new laboratories for wastewater monitoring in Exeter and will involve close working and sharing of samples with the EA.

Currently the EA extract SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA from wastewater and perform qPCR and send selected samples to sequencing laboratories for genome sequencing.