Robert W. Blakesley, Ph.D.

Associate Investigator
Genome Technology Branch

Director
Sequencing Group
NIH Intramural Sequencing Center

A.B. University of California, Berkeley, 1969
Ph.D. Michigan State University, 1974

(301) 435-6157 (301) 435-6170 rblakesl@nhgri.nih.gov		Advanced Technology Center 8717 Grovemont Circle Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Selected Publications		NIH Intramural Sequencing Center

I am the director of the Sequence Finishing Group at the National Institutes of Health Intramural Sequencing Center (NISC). The center is a moderate-scale, high-throughput DNA sequencing facility, which currently has the capacity to generate 3 million reads annually. NISC has major roles in the Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC) program, a large multi-species comparative sequencing project, and the Cancer Genome Anatomy Project (CGAP). The Sequence Finishing Group employs a variety of experimental and computational tools to generate the final, high-accuracy sequence product. In addition, my work focuses on improving NISC's sequencing pipeline by developing more consistent large-scale DNA purification methods, using robotics to increase overall efficiency and to reduce costs, and applying good manufacturing principles.

The great progress seen in deducing the genomic sequence of humans was made possible by significant advancements in a number of technologies. A few examples include modifications to DNA polymerase to make sequencing reactions more tolerant of unnatural substrates, enhanced detection and sensitivity through improvements to fluorescent nucleotide substrates, and development of capillary electrophoresis-based instrumentation to automate separation and detection of sequencing-reaction products. Other examples are employment of parallel processing through 96- and 384-well formats to achieve very high sample throughput, and development of software to manage and distill information out of the voluminous amount of data generated. New technologies will continue to empower researchers to continue the exploration of the human and many other genomes, and then to apply the knowledge gained.

I have had a career-long research interest in providing practical technological solutions to research problems. I spent over 20 years in an industrial molecular biology R&D lab, developing products in a number of areas, including nucleic acid enzymology, purification and manipulation of nucleic acids, apparatus and software design, and DNA sequencing.