Mission statement
The objectives of the BBSRC IGF funding that started FlyChip were to establish a genomics infrastructure that would provide UK Drosophila researchers access to these emerging technologies, thereby maintaining the internationally recognised research profile the UK fly community enjoys. Via the IGF initiative, and with other funding, we have developed core genomics resources for the UK Drosophila community and we continue to develop these resources in a national and international context. As the facility has developed we are providing access to genomics technologies for researchers working with other organisms.
Our Specific objective are:
- To drive the development of genomics resources and techniques and make these widely available to the broader research community. It is our aim to implement new omics techniques and make them available to the community, both through our facility and also through transfer of expertise to other UK research groups.
- Provide access to state-of-the-art microarray platforms for expression profiling and other genomics applications.
- Develop methodologies, especially in terms of quality control, normalisation, quantification and data analysis, that will be broadly applicable to the design and implementation of genomics experiments in metazoans. As a complex eukaryote with a compact genome, the Drosophila model is ideally suited to such a role.
- To expand the scope of the genomics resources to enable the community to encompass the use of whole genome arrays for expression profiling, transcription factor binding studies and chromatin structure studies.
- To develop a more cohesive interaction with members of the community who require access to genomics tools. We wish offer a flexible and interactive service for UK researchers, accommodating those who need access to reagents to perform their own genomics studies or hosting researchers within the facility for more complex studies.
- Utilise Drosophila as a model for establishing an effective metazoan systems biology platform.
- To form multidisciplinary collaborations aimed at developing new genomics techniques and informatics methods.
- Take a proactive role in the creation of international public genomics resources that benefit not only the UK research community, but also, through the development of international standards and resources, the world wide fly community.
