Canada is a world leader in Sequencing--but not for long

The worlds most exclusive and sought-after genomics meeting was held last week in Marco Island. The pace of discovery was astounding, as whole genomes can now be sequenced using existing technology in a day. Instruments from Illumina, Roche, and Applied Biosystems are leading the way. The Keynote address was given by Eric Lander of the Broad Institute. As many of you know, Dr. Lander is one of three scientists picked to advise President Obama on Scientific Policy

How did Canada's scientist fare? Very well is the answer. On the opening day, Canadian scientists were invited to give three of the first ten talks. In addition, Tom Hudson gave the first talk in the Plenary Session on Cancer and Comparative Genomics. Two of the three Concurrent Sessions were chaired by Canadians Andre Marziali and Steven Jones, and Marco Marra was invited to give a talk in the plenary session on the final day.

As one invited speaker, Ken Dewar of McGill University, pointed out in an interview with CTV news, the organizing committee for the AGBT conference were arguing about the fact that so many Canadians were amongst the invitees to speak at this meeting. Again, this is the most prestigious Genomics meeting on the planet. This conference turned away 40% of all applicants who wanted to attend because the meeting was too full. It was the place to be for Genomics, and Canada had a huge impact.

Now I hope our Canadian Government will see fit to reverse their earlier decision to take away funding for Genome Canada, and allow Canada to prosper in the new age of genomics.