NZ Uni EMC broke considered ditching EMC before SNAFU

Re: 15% growth

Well the sheep genome is done, but the move now is GBS, genotyping by sequencing since with barcoding you can now sequence multiple fragments in the same lane, so one per animal, or many SNPs per flock type of thing.

My youngest is currently engaged in a bioinfo PhD at Otago whilst being part time employed as a bioinformatician at Invermay and thus is involved in GBS projects for a number of species. Not sure if sheep are currently on her to do list, she was doing some sheep stuff a while ago.

Just like mess expands to fit the available space so data expands with technology. In my PhD at Otago I had a nifty device where a coloured marker pen fitted into a tube with a button at the top linked to a mechanical counter. Using different coloured pens I could count different myotube types without losing count across an entire muscle in huge physical photomontages of electron microscope pictures. Back then I even had to take the pictures by hand, winging the overlap by eye as the formvar on the slot grid supporting my section stretched under the beam. The film had to be loaded and the chamber evacuated for each film. I did have technical help to print the pictures and we did have an auto processing machine. The lab area outside my office had two shielded rooms (Faraday caged) for electrophysiology recordings) their roofs were below the rooms high stud and the space was used to store tightly rolled bundles of muscle montages.

As I was leaving after submitting they were installing a heat printer with a control which would montage your sample automatically. Now I bet I could count the profiles on a screen without having to print a damn thing. Increasing productivity and therefore data acquisition. Each montage was a subset of one point on a line graph or part of a bar on a bar graph.

Re: Is that all?

Less than hitherto. The National Sheep flock has declined from a high of 70million in the mid '70s to more like 40million now*. The All Blacks have been playing through all that period so the two together will constitute less information than before.

*many low level sheep farms have been converted to dairy since there is much more money in milk fat than meat and wool. In addition with the Ngai Tahu Treaty settlement and market rents on marginal high country farms many have been abandoned to nature thus further reducing ovine habitat.