Microbiome

Early this month, as South Africa entered LockDown Level 3 and mask wearing and hand sanitising became more entrenched in our daily lives, CPGR completed a pilot skin microbiome project for Cape Town start up Tuesday Innovation. CPGR applied their routine metagenomics sequencing workflow to identify the presence of bacterial DNA found on facial skin. Skin swabs were obtained from different locations on the face, DNA was extracted from the swabs, bacterial DNA was targeted for sequencing, and sequencing reads were compared to equivalent bacterial DNA sequencing reads in a reference database.

Dr Shane Murray, Senior Genomics Project Manager at CPGR said
“We were excited to carry out this pilot project for Tuesday Innovation. We have seen a surge in interest in both human and
environmental microbiome studies over the last year, and this represents our first skin project”.

Dave Matten and Jon Ambler, founders of Tuesday Innovation, commented:

“We are excited to be a part of the growth of biotechhere in South Africa, and are already looking at other novel applications for this kind of data”.

For more information about CPGR’s metagenomics sequencing
options, please contact info@cpgr.org.za