1. You will need:

2. Submitting your samples

If you’ve sequenced samples yourself, you can simply upload the sequencing reads to the platform, and skip all chapters before Results.

3. Packaging and labeling the samples

Sample preparation

Prepare the equivalent of 8-12 OD600 or 4-6 x 10^9 cells (e.g. 8-12 mL culture at 1.0 OD600) resuspended in Zymo 1X DNA/RNA Shield. We accept cell pellets from both BSL1 and BSL2 strains.

  1. Pellet the cells by centrifugation and remove as much supernatant as possible.
    1. A compact cell pellet with all the supernatant removed (e.g. E. coli pellets) should weigh approximately 15 mg.
    2. A wet cell pellet where supernatant cannot be all removed without disturbing the pellet (e.g. Streptococcus sp. pellets) should be approximately 30-50 mg.
    3. Please DO NOT send more than 50 mg of material or there will be too many cells to be protected from degradation by the DNA/RNA Shield.
  2. Resuspend (wash) the pellet in 1 mL PBS, then pellet again and remove supernatant.
  3. Resuspend the final pellet in 0.5 mL of Zymo 1X DNA/RNA Shield in a 2 mL screw cap tube.

You can also send extracted DNA if you have that available:

Preparing individual samples for shipping

Package the samples in 2mL screw cap tubes. Samples should ONLY be sent in transparent, 96-well, PCR strip tubes or 96-well PCR plates.

To prevent damage and leakage of the tubes during shipment, please place the screw cap tubes in a rigid container such as a falcon tube or tube box before shipping. For orders of more than 10 samples, please put the tubes in a tube box and load the samples row by row in numerical order as this greatly reduces the handling time when receiving your samples. Please send samples at room temperature.

Labeling