GATC Biotech has announced that it will open a sequencing laboratory in London to provide scientists in the UK and Ireland with single sample sequencing services.
Through the GATC London Laboratory, customers will be offered a free courier delivery service of less than 24 hours.
In addition, in many cities throughout the UK and Ireland GATC offers a free sample collection service in the evening with overnight shipment directly to the GATC London Laboratory.
GATC Biotech also plans to install a 'five to nine' overnight sequencing service, called Nightxpress, which will reduce delivery times to just 16 hours from sample collection.
From Monday to Friday, DNA samples will be collected for free from 5pm at defined GATC sample collection points and by 9am the next morning, including Saturdays, DNA sequencing results will be ready for download.
With GATC's overnight service scientists can gain a head start for follow-up experiments of almost two days.
Nightxpress will start operations on 15 February 2010, initially with customers in London and the surrounding areas.
GATC has already built a network of GATC sample collection points in Cambridge, Oxford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Harwell, London, Liverpool, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin, which it plans to extend.
GATC Biotech applies a highly automated sequencing platform for mass customisation using technologies such as Applied Biosystems' ABI 3730XL, Roche Diagnostics' GS FLX and the Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx.
The GATC London Laboratory will be situated in the London Bioscience Innovation Centre (LBIC) and will begin operations on 4 January 2010.
