Wellcome Sanger Institute
Faculty 32 | | |
Staff | ~900 | |
---|---|---|
Address | Wellcome Genome Campus | |
Location | , | |
Coordinates | 52°04′39″N 00°11′15″E / 52.07750°N 0.18750°E | |
Website | sanger |
The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a
It is located on the Wellcome Genome Campus by the village of
Since 2000, the institute expanded its mission to understand "the role of genetics in health and disease".[4] The institute now employs around 900 people[5] and engages in five main areas of research: Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation; Cellular Genetics; Human Genetics; Parasite and Microbes; and the Tree of Life.
Facilities and resources
Campus
In 1993 the then 17 Sanger Centre staff moved into temporary laboratory space at Hinxton Hall in Cambridgeshire.[6]
This 55-acre (220,000 m2) site was to become the Wellcome Genome Campus, which has a growing population of around 1300 staff, approximately 900 of whom work at the Sanger Institute.
Sequencing
The Sanger Institute's sequencing staff handle millions of
Scientific resources
This section needs to be updated.(April 2015) |
- COSMIC,[15] a catalogue of somatic mutations in cancer
- DECIPHER, a database of chromosomal imbalance and phenotype in humans, using Ensembl resources[16]
- Ensembl,[17]a genome browser co-hosted by the European Bioinformatics Institute.
- GeneDB,[18] a pathogen sequence database
- Mouse Genetics Project, including a database of standardised phenotypic analysis for many hundreds of mutant mice.
- Vega,[19]a vertebrate genome annotation resource
Several databases were initiated at the Sanger Institute but are now hosted elsewhere:
- peptidasedatabase
- Pfam,[21] a protein family database
- Rfam,[22] an RNA family database
- phylogenetictrees for animal genes
- WormBase,[24] a database on the biology and sequence of the model organism C. elegans and other related Nematodes.
- helminths(both Nematodes and Platyhelminthes).
Research
Scientific research at the Sanger Institute is organised into five Scientific Programmes, each defining a major area of research with a particular biological, disease or analytic focus. The current Programmes at the Sanger Institute are Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation, Cellular Genetics, Human Genetics, Parasites and Microbes and Tree of Life. Studies from all programmes provide insights into human, pathogen, cellular evolution, the phenotypic and hence biological consequences of genome variation and the processes which cause mutations.
Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation Programme
Provides leadership in data aggregation and informatics innovation, develops high-throughput cellular models of cancer for genome-wide functional screens and drug testing, and explores somatic mutation's role in clonal evolution, ageing and development. This Programme includes the Cancer Genome Project.
Cellular Genetics Programme
Explores human gene function by studying the impact of genome variation on cell biology. Large-scale systematic screens are used to discover the impact of naturally occurring and engineered genome mutations in human induced pluripotent cells (hIPSCs), their differentiated derivatives and other cell types. It is one of the founder programmes driving the creation and organisation of the international Human Cell Atlas initiative.
Human Genetics Programme
The institute's research in
The Programme applies genomics to population-scale studies to identify the causal variants and pathways involved in human disease and their effects on cell biology. It also models developmental disorders to explore which physical aspects might be reversible.
Pathogens and Microbes Programme
Investigates the common underpinning mechanisms of evolution, infection and resistance to therapy into bolster understanding of bacteria, viruses and parasites, with a particular interest in malaria. It also explores the effects of genome variation on the biology of host–pathogen interactions, in particular host response to infection and the role of microiotia in health and disease. All the genomes after sequencing are made available at the web-based onsite-maintained database, GeneDB.[citation needed]
Tree of Life Programme
The Tree of Life Programme was created in 2019 to investigate the diversity of complex organisms found in the UK through sequencing and cellular technologies. It also compares and contrasts species' genome sequences to unlock insights into evolution and conservation. This Programme will play a leading role in the Darwin Tree of Life Project, a UK-wide initiative to sequence the genomes of all 66,000 complex species (
Collaborations
Much of the Sanger Institute's research is carried out in partnership with the wider scientific community; over 90 percent of the institute's research papers involve collaborations with other organisations.[32] Significant collaborations include:
- 1000 Genomes Project
- GENCODE and ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements)
- International Cancer Genome Consortium
- International HapMap Project[33]
- International Knockout Mouse Consortium
- International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium
- SNP (Single nucleotide polymorphism) Consortium
- The Copy Number Variation Project[34]
- The parasite.
- The Human Genome Project
- The UK 10,000 Genomes Project (UK10K)[35]
Public engagement
The Sanger Institute has a programme of public engagement activity. The programme aims to make complex biomedical research accessible to a range of audiences including school students and their teachers, and local community members.
The Communication and Public Engagement programme aims to "encourage informed discussion about issues relevant to Sanger Institute research"
Scientific and public engagement staff also collaborate on and contribute to national projects such as the UK's InsideDNA
Graduate training
The institute operates two PhD training programmes: a four-year course for basic science graduates, and a three-year course for clinicians. The four-year course requires students to rotate around three different laboratories in order to broaden their scientific horizons before choosing a PhD project. Each student is required to choose at least one experimental and one informatics-based rotation project.[39] The institute houses approximately 50 pre-doctoral students, all of whom are registered at the University of Cambridge.[40]
Officers
According to Companies House the five officers of the parent company Genome Research Limited are Henry Parkinson, Kay Elizabeth Davies, Rolf Dieter Heuer, James Cuthbert Smith, David Lindsay Willetts.[41] According to the Sanger website Henry Parkinson is head of legal.[42]
Staff
As of 2023[update] the Sanger employs more than a thousand people, and is led by
Academic faculty
As of 2019[update] a faculty of 32 scientists lead hypothesis-driven research, seeking answers to biomedical questions.[43] Among others, these include Dominic Kwiatkowski, Nicole Soranzo, Michael Stratton, Sarah Teichmann and Matthew Hurles. The institute also has a number of Associate Faculty members, International Fellows and Honorary Faculty. These include Adrian Bird, Ewan Birney, Chris Ponting, Fiona Powrie, Stephen O'Rahilly, Antonio Vidal-Puig, and Wolf Reik, among others.
Scientific advisory board
The Sanger Board of Management are guided by the scientific advisory board[44] whose members include Professor David Altshuler, Professor Anton Berns, Professor David J. Lipman, Professor Kevin Marsh and Professor Sir Paul Nurse.
Alumni
Previous faculty members at the Sanger include:[45]
- Alex Bateman, EMBL-EBI[46]
- Tim Hubbard, Professor at King's College London
- Leena Peltonen-Palotie (1952–2010)[47]
- Julian Rayner
- Eleftheria Zeggini
- Richard Durbin FRS
History
Management
In 2000, Allan Bradley left his appointment as professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, in the US, to take up the position as director of the Sanger Institute. Bradley wanted to build on the achievements made by the Sanger Institute in the Human Genome Project by "concentrating on gene function, cancer genomics, and the genomes of model organisms such as the mouse and the zebrafish".[51] Bradley received his BA, MA and PhD in genetics from the University of Cambridge.[52][53][54][55]
In 2010, Bradley stepped down from his leadership role to form a startup company, but remains on the faculty of the institute as director emeritus. Mike Stratton, who is a leader of the Cancer Genome Project and the International Cancer Genome Consortium, was appointed director of the Sanger Institute in May of that year.[56]
Human Genome Project
The Sanger Institute was opened in 1993, three years after the inception of the
Since the publishing of the human genome, research carried out at the institute has developed beyond sequencing of organisms into various biomedical research areas, including studies into diseases such as cancer, malaria and diabetes.Controversy
In August 2018 it was reported that an investigation was under way into allegations of bullying of staff and gender discrimination made against senior management of the
In October 2019 it was reported that the institute had manufactured a medical tool with the intent of monetising it despite not having ethical nor legal approval to do so and having been made aware by Stellenbosch University and internal whistleblowers.[63]
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