25th Anniversary of the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center (NISC)

NISC @25 Open House Celebration

Thank you to all who helped us celebrate NISC's 25th anniversary! Please enjoy the video, article, photos and newsletters below that commemorates this momentous occasion!

Genome Landscape Article

As the sun came up on 1997, the Human Genome Project (then in its seventh of 13 years) was adding megabases of genome sequence to public databases weekly, as large-scale DNA sequencing had advanced substantially.
Read the whole article here.

Open House Photos

Photos from our open house celebration available here. (NIH only)

NISC @25 Newsletters

• Vol 26, 2022 Newsletter

Silver Anniversary After 2 full years of maximum telework, NISC finally moved back into a mode where staff beyond the lab members could come onsite. Turns out some people would rather work from home, so at this stage most days there are a couple of binfo group members at Fishers Ln, but otherwise the lab members rule the roost. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Payam Haghighi, Annette Sante and Eric Green




• Vol 25, 2021 Newsletter

New Normal Going into year 2 of the pandemic NISC reached somewhat of an equilibrium with nearly all the lab staff working fairly regular hours onsite and the others working from home. In terms of the metrics used to track productivity of the entire organization things looked ‘normal’, or in some ways more productive than in the past. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Raymond Smith and Juyun (Juju) Crawford




• Vol 24, 2020 Newsletter

This is not a drill For years the NIH/HHS would send out emails about weather emergencies and ‘pandemic preparedness’ and I thought to myself, are they nuts?! Apparently not. NISC abandoned ship on March 20th (Christina remembers there was no place to get food, everything was closed, and she got one of the last prepackaged salads from the 5601 cafeteria), with a few folks coming in for a few more days to shut down the lab. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Chan Scharer, Marie (Gestole) Lovett and Sean Black




• Vol 23, 2019 Newsletter

The first rule of Long Read Club....... It was not easy, but Shelise and others at NISC made gradual strides getting ‘long read’ data off the GridION. Focusing on a human cell line, CMH13, that only represented a single haplotype, by the start of 2019 ~100 flowcells had been run on the GridION yielding >143 Gb of data, of which 50 Gb (~15x coverage) were in precious ultra- long reads >100kb. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Jessica Rosardo and Meg Vemulapalli




• Vol 22, 2018 Newsletter

Whole-genome Sequencing @NISC Sequencing capabilities at NISC have dramatically changed over time, from the sequence of a single BAC clone being worthy of a publication to completing >2000 exomes in a year. Even so, up until 2018 standard (30x) whole-genome sequencing for human (or similarly sized) genomes was not practical at NISC. For one, the machine time it would take to run a genome was outsized with respect to the value gained doing say, ~10 exomes, and though the cost got to be ~OK for one-offs, sequencing 10s or 100s of samples by WGS was prohibitive. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Keith Wetherby, Pnina Laric and Jim Thomas




• Vol 21, 2017 Newsletter

Nanopore Sequencing @NISC NISC is constantly evaluating the sequencing technology landscape in order to make decisions about what instruments to buy and when. Sometimes a technology comes out and there is an effort to try to get the platform on site as soon as possible, and in other cases it is more of a prolonged wait and see approach. Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) sequencing platform was a case of the latter. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Baishali Maskeri and Jim Mullikin




• Vol 20, 2016 Newsletter

Far and Near Before it was common, or cool, to telework from remote locations, NISC had a few of its own at the vanguard of this brave new world. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Michelle (Lim) Kang, Maeve O’Huallachain and Brian Schmidt




• Vol 19, 2015 Newsletter

CCGO In 2015 NISC was in the midst of its latest version of Medical Sequencing. The previous year NISC collaborated with Dr. Les Biesecker’s group to stand up a new project, Clinical Center Genomics Opportunity (CCGO). Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Cyruss Tsurgeon and Mila Dekhtyar




• Vol 18, 2014 Newsletter

The Breakroom Before you read any further, I have a confession to make. My favorite room at NISC is the breakroom. I honestly cannot think of one bad memory associated with this space. Every time I walk down the hallway I look through the door at the view and wonder what treats or people will be there to greet me. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Michelle (Walker) LoPorto and Casandra Montemayor




• Vol 17, 2013 Newsletter

NISC at the Museum The NHGRI offsite retreats that many alumni and current staff remember fondly were discontinued in ~2010. The NHGRI Symposium is now the annual event where the entire institute can gather together and is held on campus. In 2013 the GREAT Awards ceremony was held at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Betsy Novotny and Morgan Park




• Vol 16, 2012 Newsletter

Paradigm shift and NISC Funded Projects With the first phase of the ClinSeq project essentially complete, NISC was now focused on sequencing projects that came in via the old ‘NISC1’ model, ie an investigator has a sequencing project and comes to NISC to get it done. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni profiles: Grace Chu




• Vol 15, 2011 Newsletter

Exomes and an Earthquake The GAIIx were modified to extend their capability to include generating paired- end reads in ~2010 ( 2 x 76 or 2 x 101 b). This was a big leap forward from the shorter single-end reads that were the standard outputs of the machines early on and enabled exome sequencing on a ‘large’ scale. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Yuriy Shevchenko and Holly (Coleman) Marfani




• Vol 14, 2010 Newsletter

LIMS, NIMS and Barcodes, Oh My! Much like the compute resources covered in the last edition, the ability to track and manage samples through the lab from tube to data is an essential part of NISC’s daily operations. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Ermelina (Tiongson) Enriquez and Karen Schandler




• Vol 13, 2009 Newsletter

Eric has left the building: Dr. Green stepped down as Director of NISC in the Fall of 2009. Here is a quick snapshot of how that transpired (Dr. Green will have more to say on this in a later edition). Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Keisha Hines Harris and Joel Han




• Vol 12, 2008 Newsletter

Microbiome: As the landscape of large-scale sequencing changed, NISC was adapting not only in terms of sequencing technology but also the types of projects in which to apply the sequencing capacity. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Mike Gregory and Christina Sison




• Vol 11, 2007 Newsletter

10th Anniversary: 2007 marked the 10th Anniversary of NISC. A scientific symposium was organized as part of the celebration with prominent members of the genomics community at large presenting the latest and greatest in genome science. Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Natalie Gurson and Alice Young




• Vol 10, 2006 Newsletter

Automation: At this point NISC was pushing about ~3 million plasmids through the pipeline (>10,000 per work day). Supporting this scale of operation was a variety of automated systems designed for specific tasks in the ‘Workflow’
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Nancy Hansen and Shelise Brooks




• Vol 9, 2005 Newsletter

NISC & ENCODE: The human genome was ‘completed’ in 2003. While genome sequencing would continue for other species (indefinitely as we now know!), it was clear that methods other than just genome (and cDNA) sequencing were going to need to be applied on a large-scale to interpret the megabase long strings of A,T,G and Cs that made up our genome.
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Cheron Jones and Richelle Legaspi




• Vol 8, 2004 Newsletter

Moving on up....to the 5th floor: The move to Fishers Ln had been in the works for over a year and involved a great deal of painstaking planning and input from everyone. Alice remembers senior staff pouring over schematics time and time again deciding on proposed lab organization and each utility placement.
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Stephen Granite and Jenny McDowell




• Vol 7, 2003 Newsletter

Origin story of Target 1: The multi-species projects were founded on sequencing the ‘same’ (orthologous) region in as many species as possible/or needed. These regions were called ‘Targets’ and were thus organized by a target name, each being their own project. But why start with the region on human chromosome 7 spanning the CFTR locus and adjacent genes designated as Target 1?
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Brad Coleman and Cathy Masiello




• Vol 6, 2002 Newsletter

The Finishing Group: During this timeframe and continuing for many more years, the sequencing and assembly of BAC clones was the primary objective for the group.
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Peggy (Kwong) Hall and Betty Barnabas




• Vol 5, 2001 Newsletter

Who let the dogs in? While the folks on site within NISC had been responsible for the success of the organization to date, it was not without tremendously helpful interactions over the years (and going forward) with large sequencing centers, ie Sanger Center, The Broad, WashU Genome Center etc.
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Dr. Bob Blakesley and Shi-Ling Ho




• Vol 4, 2000 Newsletter

8 Days a Week: With the added space fully functional and milestones to meet, NISC rapidly grew into a true production facility. But wow, how did they develop the capacity to sequence 500,000-1,000,000 reads in a year?
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Jeff McCloskey and Mal Stantripop




• Vol 3, 1999 Newsletter

Full Speed Ahead: The long-term plan for NISC right from the start was to use the support from the 14 ICs to get NISC off the ground and running with the intention that starting in the fall of 1999 (FY00) NISC would be “self- supporting”.
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Jyoti (Gupta) Dayal and Pam Thomas




• Vol 2, 1998 Newsletter

Enter ATC: Right from the outset in 1997 plans were in the works to renovate space for NISC at 8717 Grovemont Circle in Gaithersburg in the Advanced Technology Center (ATC).
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Nicole Dietrich and Quino Maduro




• Vol 1, 1997 Newsletter

Origin Story: It has to start with Eric Green, right? Eric Green, M.D., PhD., was recruited to the NIH’s National Center for Genomic Research in 1994, moving from Washington University in St. Louis where he had been a part of Maynard Olson’s lab and had been mapping human chromosome 7 for sequencing at the WashU Genome Center.
Read the whole newsletter here.

Including alumni & employee profiles: Jeff Touchman and Gerard Bouffard