We were formed in 1998 primarily to provide a support facility for the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit and Division of Signal Transduction Therapy within the Department of Biochemistry at Dundee University, both of which are under the directorship of Sir Philip Cohen. We still act as a facility for these laboratories, but we also have many customers throughout the UK and beyond.

Initially based within the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, we had one PE Biosystems 373A Stretch DNA sequencer giving a maximum capacity of 36 samples per day. At the beginning of 1999 we moved out of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit into another laboratory within the Department of Biochemistry and shortly afterwards expanded our facility by the addition of a PE Biosystems 377 DNA sequencer and by Excelling the 373A Stretch machine, giving a maximum capacity of 100 samples per day. This allowed us to open the facility up to other laboratories within the Medical Sciences Institute (MSI) and Wellcome Trust Biocentre (WTB) buildings and within other departments of the University.

About the same time we obtained a Qiagen 9600 Bio-Robot allowing us to automate bacterial plasmid DNA mini-preps and other tasks. With the expansion of the facility, we took on extra staff during the summer of 1999 to give a total of three part or full-time members of staff. In the Autumn of 1999 we obtained another PE Biosystems 377 DNA sequencer, giving a maximum capacity of 136 sequence samples per day. This additional capacity allowed us to open up our facility to users outside of Dundee University. At the beginning of 2001, we Excelled our newest 377 sequencer. It could then handle up to 64 samples on one gel. This resulted in a maximum capacity of 164 samples per day. Around the same time, all our staff members became full time. This helped us to deal with the increased numbers of samples we were processing.

Many changes have occurred since that time. At the start of 2003, we acquired our first ABI 3730 capillary DNA sequencer. This meant substantial changes to the ways in which we processed samples and we have worked out new procedures that enable us to use the 3730 to produce excellent results for customers with parallel decreases in time and labour spent on each sample. The 3730 also has much greater capacity than our gel based machines (about 500 reactions per day) and has allowed us to offer our facility to even more customers.

In March of 2005, we purchased a second ABI 3730 capillary DNA sequencer. This machine increased our sequencing capacity still further and provided us with greater resilience. We also branched out into fragment analysis by including Genemapper software on the new 3730. In 2010 we obtained a 3730xl DNA analyser (96 capillary machine), thereby increasing our throughput and resilience even further.

Over the years we have added to the other equipment in the facility so that we are able to offer a fast and reliable range of products to our customers. For more information on the equipment we currently have, please follow this link.

We currently have in excess of 300 research groups all over the UK that regularly use our range of contract research and associated products. If you would like to become one of our customers, please follow this link.