World-class science, one sample at a time

Every sample represents a new opportunity to learn. From generating high-quality sequencing data to embracing new technologies as they emerge, Ashleigh Williams’s role in the Short Read Sequencing Team within Scientific Operations is both varied and fast-paced. Working behind the scenes, she supports a wide range of projects, ensuring samples are prepared, processed and sequenced to the highest standards while collaborating with colleagues across the Institute to solve technical challenges and deliver reliable results.

Ashleigh's journey into genomics was not one she had planned from the start. Like many people working in science, her career has taken a number of unexpected turns, each helping her discover where her interests and strengths really lay. Along the way, she has had the opportunity to work with pioneering sequencing platforms, contribute to world-first scientific advances and develop skills beyond the laboratory through mentoring, training and public engagement.

In this blog, Ashleigh reflects on what a typical day in the sequencing team looks like, the excitement of working with constantly evolving technologies, and the importance of remaining curious and open to new opportunities.

I'm within the Short Read Sequencing Team specifically, so my day is loading the sequencers, quantitating the samples, and speaking to service users and scientific service representatives – they are the go-between between us, the users and faculty. My day usually starts with checking my emails, seeing what I've got on the schedule and then planning my day from there. I'll look to see if any new samples have been dropped off. If they have, I will check if we have done all the quality checks on them. Then, I try to prioritise my work in the sense of which runs – a single operating cycle of a sequencer – are shorter as they'll then free up the machines for the next day. The longer runs I tend to do after lunch, because they can just run through to the following day. Then, at the end of the day, it's pretty much making sure everything's ready, so we can hit the ground running again.

It is a process driven job, but we work across so many different platforms, so we have our Illumina sequencers, which used to be our main platform that was run all the time, but now we've got things like the Element Biosciences sequencers, and we have the Ultima sequencers which have just come in. All of these are very different processes, so it mixes thing up a little bit throughout the day.

We usually have someone from the team that will take the lead in training up on a platform and they'll work with the Research and Development team. It's usually Principal Scientist, Dr Mike Quail. So, you'll work with him to learn about the new technologies, or we have external application scientists from the companies come in to teach us all. Then, whichever one of us is leading that process will receive further training and pass it on to the rest of the team.

At the moment I'm working with Senior Staff Scientist, Dr Kenny Roberts, and he does a lot of newer spatial biology techniques. Element’s AVITI platform can do a spatial mode, so we all had the initial training, but now I work with Kenny on that to dig a little deeper, which I'm going to start rolling out to the team. This platform was recently used by Dr Linda Grillova, Career Development Fellow, in the Parasites and Microbes programme programme who is looking into host-pathogen interactions to understand how syphilis colonises human cells.

We also recently completed two pilot studies using the new Illumina spatial technology known as StrataMap with Dr April Rose Foster, Senior Staff Scientist, in the Cellular Genomics programme. In the first pilot, we tested the technology on brain and kidney samples from mice, and the second pilot was using human skin samples. We were actually the first in Europe to test the technology and it gave successful results which was exciting. Other companies are really starting to explore spatial transcriptomics so there are exciting things to come.

After that, I was applying for jobs and saw there were jobs here. I applied but thought they'll never employ me, because this place has got such a big reputation – for example, the Human Genome Project, UK Biobank, etc. But I got an interview, and I was like, what?! When I got interviewed, I remember afterwards I came out and I thought, I don't think that went badly, but I also don't think it was anything special, so I don't think they'll give me the job. And then the next day, they called and said, "Do you want the job?” So, two and half years later, here I am, and it’s been great.

There's so much going on here, so much more than I thought. There's a lot of times when you're doing something, which becomes routine because it is part of your job, but then someone goes, “Oh, we're the first people in Europe to do this or we're the first people in the world to do that,” and when you actually reflect on that, you think, wow, I am part of that.

It's definitely rewarding when you're trying out a new technique. Usually, when we're doing something new, we collaborate with quite a few different people, and when it all comes together and everybody's excited about it, that's a great feeling. The same goes for a sample that just won't work at first. It can be frustrating because we'll try different approaches and sometimes can't find a logical reason why it's not working. But when it finally does, and you look at the metrics and see everything performing as it should, it's really exciting. We usually get there in the end, although sometimes it takes quite a few runs and attempts.