We are part of the Institute of Biotechnology, an independent research unit belonging to the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE) at the University of Helsinki. We are situated in the Viikki Campus in eastern Helsinki. Viikki is one of the largest university centers in Scandinavia concentrating on various biological sciences. Since 2016, our laboratory is in the 4th floor (D-staircase) of Biocenter 2 building.
The laboratory was founded in 2008 by fusing two existing laboratories into one larger unit. Our group has two distinct functions:
1) We are a core facility providing DNA sequencing service.
2) We perform research projects on several topics ranging from bioinformatics to de novo genome sequencing of entire genomes.
Since 2006 we have been utilizing the NGS approach in genomics, metagenomics and functional genomics. The constantly developing NGS technologies have enabled us to perform sequencing of eukaryotes both assembling them de novo and performing large scale genome sequencing on the scale of population studies. With our increasing interest on structures of genomes and genes and their functions we are also working on bioinformatics related to genome sequencing and assembly. A continuation of the assembly is the annotation of genomes which we are working on with our collaborators. Also resequencing novel genomes or selected regions can be done.