Microbiome and Virome Genome Analysis Core Facility

The microbiome and virome core facility of the Department of Medicine is operated by the Institute for AI in medicine(IKIM) and the Institute of Medical Microbiology.

The facility is co-led by Dr. Ivana Kraiselburd, Prof. Dr. Folker Meyer and Prof. Dr. Jan Buer. ·
The microbiome and virome core facility offers high-throughput sequencing supported by advanced laboratory automation and a full range of long- and short-read sequencing technologies. Our workflows integrate robotics, optimized library preparation, and comprehensive computational analysis to deliver fast, reliable results for diverse biological applications.

Examples are:

Whole-genome sequencing of bacteria and viruses
Targeted amplicon sequencing for viral and bacterial genomes
Amplicon-based microbiome profiling
Integrated (meta)genomic sequencing using both third-generation long reads and next-generation short reads

The core collaborates closely with departments across the University Medicine Essen and the University of Duisburg–Essen, supporting projects from experimental design through sample preparation, handling, data storage, and downstream analysis. We offer a set of automated, reproducible analysis pipelines built with Snakemake, ensuring consistent, high-quality results for a wide range of sequencing applications.

Rendering Nucleic Acid samples into electronic sequences and their computational analysis. — The core accepts extracted nucleic acids, creates sequencing libraries for long and short read sequencing and provides computational analyses. DNA extraction is also possible at the core facility.

Sample Types

We focus on target microorganisms and microbial communities (no human genomes)
We can porcess diverse sample types such as blood/plasma, feces, swabs and wastewater
We only extract Biosafety Level (BSL) 1 and 2 microorganisms, but we could sequence already extracted nucleic acids from BSL-3 pathogens
For nucleic acid extraction please make sure that samples do not contain BSL-3 pathogens

Contact: eMail.