Supporting NCHC's "Tech v Virus" Project, Illumina provides free gene sequencing analysis services for the coronavirus

To help Taiwan cope with the impact and challenges of the new wave of the pandemics on public health, people's livelihood, economy, education, the National Center for High-performance Computing of the National Applied Research Laboratories under the Ministry of Science and Technology launched the "Tech v Virus" 2.0 project at the beginning of this month, making resources such as the computing power, storage, big data datasets, and DAS data analysis platform of the Taiwania series of supercomputers available for free use upon applications to help fight the pandemic. Today (6/21), it further announced that it would work with Illumina, a global leader in gene sequencing, to provide special project applicants with a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) virus gene sequencing analysis service (COVIDSeq™). There are no restrictions on the number of samples to be sequenced. These free services are available until December 31, 2021. Through the analysis of virus gene sequencing data, they can monitor the virus, the transmission chain traceability, and even for vaccine development and research.
 

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)¹ is the key core technology required to move towards a new generation of precision medicine or precision health. This technology can be used for not only humans and other organisms but also virus genome decoding. At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, the first SARS-CoV-2 virus genome was sequenced and decoded by Illumina, allowing manufacturers to rapidly develop polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and mRNA vaccines. Gene sequencing is also a great tool for traceability testing. By analyzing the complete virus gene map, it is helpful for gene sequence comparisons to confirm the correlation between infected people and to observe whether new virus strains have emerged and find new mutation sites.
 

In the "Tech v Virus" 2.0 project, the NCHC of the NARLabs provides high-speed gene sequence analysis equipment and computing platform, supplemented by the COVIDSeq™ free traffic analysis provided by Illumina. This can support major domestic gene sequencing laboratories, genome centers, and industries. A maximum of 6,000 specimens can be processed in a day, greatly increasing the research volume of specimen gene sequencing and providing scientific evidence and assistance for pandemic analysis, virus evolution, or vaccine development.

Minister Wu Tsung-Tsong of the Ministry of Science and Technology stated that the fight against the pandemic knows no national borders, and Illumina is an international leader in gene sequencing technology. The Ministry of Science and Technology has brought in international resources and promoted public-private collaboration in hopes of helping Taiwan's anti-epidemic efforts. Director-general Shepherd Shi of the NCHC of the NARLabs said that the addition of Illumina has infused strong support for the domestic research on virus gene sequencing and analysis. The rapid virus analysis through supercomputers will bring more energy to the country to fight the threats of virus mutations.
  
--> Application website of Tech v Virus 2.0 Project
--> Link to the solicitation video

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¹ Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), a massively parallel sequencing technology that offers ultra-high throughput, scalability, and speed. The technology is used to determine the order of nucleotides in entire genomes or targeted regions of DNA or RNA.