Illumina and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance announced a sequencing agreement Tuesday for the Frozen Zoo, a collection of biological samples from threatened and endangered species.
Illumina, which specializes in DNA sequencing, will work on up to 4,000 samples representing 1,300 species in the Frozen Zoo. The data collected will be used for research into wildlife medicine, evolutionary biology and biodiversity preservation, according to a company statement.
“Illumina is proud to partner with SDZWA to power the next era of the Frozen Zoo,” said Cande Rogert, vice president and global head of advanced sciences at Illumina. “This collaboration is a wonderful example of the way multiomic technologies can activate the potential of these critical biodiversity biobanks.”
Multiomic research is a biological analysis approach in which the data consists of multiple “omes,” such as the genome, epigenome and microbiome…