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Cofactor D&A is your Design & Analysis research department. The best possible results begin with the best possible people.

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About Cofactor

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Cofactor D&A is your Design & Analysis research department. The best possible results begin with the best possible people.

Read more about Cofactor

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Introduction
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Discover what more and more researchers are finding out every day... Cofactor Genomics is not a resource just for sequencing. We offer the bookends that make the sequencing data really matter. That's our D&A Design & Analysis solution.

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Who is Cofactor
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Cofactor Genomics is a Contract Research Organization (CRO) that was formed in 2008 with the vision to fill a gap in providing full beginning-to-end solutions in an industry full of ill fitted piecemeal solutions. Our team of experts have decades of experience working in the Technology Development Group at the Genome Center at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. We currently work with some of the largest life-science, pharmaceutical, agriculture, and biofuels companies in the world.

Cofactor is not a sequencing company. Cofactor is a client focussed CRO that often employs multiple sequencing platforms in executing experimental design, sequencing and analysis. Our target clients are professionals that demand results as opposed to require data. Cofactor has completed more than 1,000 projects to date and have provided unparalleled products, services, and solutions. All our clients projects benefit from the constant feedback process of "build,measure, learn" that is inherent from being responsible from the design all the way through to the insight stage of the project (even the data-only projects benefit from our refinement process). This refinement is not possible in non-CRO firms that are exposed to only a small aspect of the entire process (ex. only sample prep, sequencing, analysis, or design without industry experience). Contact us to move your project from samples to insight.

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Sequencing Platforms
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Cofactor Genomics currently offers the following sequencing platforms.

  • Illumina
    • GAIIx
    • HiSeq 2000
  • Life Technologies
    • Ion Torrent PGM
    • SOLiD 4
  • Roche 454
    • FLX
    • Junior

Each platform has strengths and weaknesses that make it more or less appropriate for your application.  At Cofactor, platform choice and optimization is for us to worry about. All you have to do is describe your research question to us. We'll design your project to choose an optimal platform (or combination of platforms) that minimizes your bottom line without sacrificing the quality of the data or results.

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Illumina GAIIx
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  • Broad range of high-throughput sequencing applications,including whole genome
  • DNA sequencing, gene expression, small RNA discovery, and protein-nucleic
  • acid interactions
  • Powerful combination of 2x100 base pair read lengths and up to 480 million paired end reads per flow cell   
  • De novo sequence assembly (whole genome and transcriptome) 
  • Whole genome or targeted resequencing RNA sequencing, small RNA sequencing, RIP-seq Single-read, paired-end and multiplexing capability
  • Most widely used platform with more than 90 Science or Nature publications 
  • With paired-end platform module, templates can be read in both directions for more than 48 Gb of data per run

 

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Life Technologies Ion Torrent PGM
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  • Massively scalable semiconductor technology currently capable of 100 MB, and soon to be 1Gb, of high quality data output
  • Simple chemistry: utilizes real-time pH measurement duringDNA replication, directly converting pHreadsinto base calls, meaning faster turnaround with increasing data reliability
  • Supports fast turnaround with only a 4 hour turn around time per run
  • Leverages over one trillion dollars in industry semiconductor research
  • Low cost makes diagnostic and amplicon sequencing significantly more affordable
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Life Technologies SOLiD 4
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  • Up to 99.99% accuracy; causative variation detections at lower coverage and cost per sample
  • Up to 50 Gb of mappable sequence data per run
  • True paired-end sequencing: detection of genetic alterations,splice variants and fusion transcripts facilitated by AB’s bidirectional sequencing capability
  • Intelligent bar coding increases accuracy of assignments and decreases bias
  • Higher quality sequence data at a lower per run cost
  • Highly accurate single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection aided by unique AB 2-base encoding technology
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Roche 454 FLX Junior
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  • Average read length of 400 base pairs
  • 99% accurate at 400 base pair read length
  • 100,000 shotgun reads / run, 70,000 amplicon reads / run
  • gDNA, amplicons, cDNA, BAC sample input compatible
  • Linux-based operating system on an HP computer
  • Extremely fast turnaround, with 100 Mb output in only four hours
  • Straightforward tools that help de novo assembly, mapping, and amplicon variant analysis
  • De novo sequencing at an affordable price
  • Targeted resequencing (high sensitivity amplicon-seq)
  • Metagenomic characterization to map species diversity
  • Longer read lengths aid greatly in producing longer contigs as a standalone platform or combined with others
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Next-Gen Sequencing… and Beyond
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Competing in today's scientific environment, both commercial and academic, necessitates the use of the latest technology. Cofactor allows researchers to move beyond studying markers and genes to full genome, transcriptome and epigenome characterization. Next-Gen makes possible previously impractical experiments such as environmental, population, and metagenomics.

While this technology offers new promise to life science and medical researchers, it also creates complex challenges. The experts at Cofactor have significant experience analyzing terabytes of data and exploiting the unique strengths of each Next-Gen platform. We call it our D&A Solution. You will call it the best possible pathway to getting meaningful results for your experiment.

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Why Cofactor D&A?
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Cofactor is truly unique in what we bring to sequencing. That is because we take a holistic approach to your experiment, beginning with the proper design and finishing with analysis that lets you get meaningful results to take your research further.

Often times, science can leave us with more questions than answers. Cofactor’s goal is to provide those answers with our expertise in design and analysis. Our D&A Solution is designed specifically to assist those researchers who require more than just sequencing at a reasonable cost. We offer expert design and analysis capabilities that are customized to your specific requirements with bioinformatics that help you make sense of the data that is generated.

Cofactor D&A is what enables us to provide the best possible results for your experiment. For all the questions your experiments generate, Cofactor can help provide the answers:

  • How do I get the best results from my experiment?
  • Is my sample too small?
  • How do I know which genes to focus on?
  • Where can I go for my De Novo sequencing?
  • Who can provide the bioinformatics I need?
  • I know sequencing, but what about the analysis?
  • Who has experiencing sequencing this organism?
  • What about read lengths?
  • Who can sequence plant, animal, and human DNA and RNA?
  • I need help with library construction.
  • Which Next-Gen sequencer is right for my project?