Nofima is working in R&D for the aquaculture, fisheries and food industry, and provide research at an international level. Nofima has three research divisions; Aquaculture Division, Division for Fisheries Industry and Market, Division for Food and Science.
Nofima is located at Ås, Stavanger, Bergen, Sunndalsøra, Averøy and Tromsø. For this project NOFIMA Centre for Recirculation in Aquaculture (NCRA) and NOFIMA Cleaner Fish Experimental Unit (CFU), both at the Research Station for sustainable aquaculture at Sunndalsøra, and the NOFIMA Next Generation Sequencing (NNGS) at Ås will be included. Sunndalsøra has inndor tanks with salmon, wrasse and lumpsucker on RAS and flow through. NNGS carries out research on methodology to characterize microbial communities.
Name of the infrastructure: Next Generation Sequencing of Microbiota
(NNGS-Microbiota)
Location: Ås, NORWAY
Website address: http://nofima.no/en/forskningsomrade/food-safety-and-quality/molecular-analysis/
Contact: Ida Rud
Facilities
NOFIMA Next Generation Sequencing of Microbiota (NNGS-Microbiota) carries out research on methodology to characterize microbial communities using next generation sequencing. The installation covers microbiota analysis of a wide range of different samples from the marine, food and health sector, including samples from RAS installations (NCRA) (biofilter biofilm, water, surfaces, fish skin and intestine) and also cod larvae (NCBC).
Services currently offered by the infrastructure
NNGS-Microbiota offers state-of-the-art analyses of microbiota from samples preferentially from the installations at NOFIMA. The methodology involves next-generation sequencing using the Illumina technology with an in-house MiSeq, and data processing using the software Quantitative Insight Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME). NNGS-Microbiota has been successfully used to analyse water and biofilm/biofilter samples from RAS and other aquaculture systems to follow the microbial ecology and their impact on water quality, salmon gut microbiota and fish health. Analytical services include bacterial DNA extraction, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing (V4) on the MiSeq, followed by data processing in QIIME. The expected output is diversity and taxonomic plots, including Excel files of all processed data.
Modality of access
Each user is expected to stay at the infrastructure following fish experiments at the NOFIMA installations, and on average the user will stay 2 weeks to perform microbiota analysis of one unit of access. The visitors will, once they arrive, have the same access to the facility, equipment and technical support as any of the NOFIMA researchers working in the facility. Degree of independency will depend on the experience of the visitor.
Unit of Access
The unit of access includes DNA extraction, pre-sequencing, sequencing and data processing of 40 samples.