A six hours drive for a one hour meeting. Whatever it took - Kerstin and I spontaneously decided to drove up to Heidelberg on May 26, because we had the great chance to meet some of the PacBio team: Glenn Farrell, Martha Trela, Terry Pizzie, Deepak Singh, Eric Schadt and Ralph Vogelsang. 

This team is just terrific. They are like a big family and they immediately adopted Kerstin and me. Terrie introduced us to the others by saying “This is GATC – our new best friends.”

When asking Glenn whether the delivery data of June 28 for our PacBio is really really really confirmed, he replied: “Nothing can stop us to ship it to you that day - except volcanic ashes from Island.”  Yeah, nothing but nature will be able interfere. And - the volcano Grimsvötn has stopped spitting in the air.

As there will be a group of international journalists visiting GATC in Constance the very same day, we joked about whether we could wrap the machine is some special foil for an impressive “out of space” effect when opening the wooden crate. How about a high gloss foil with a hightech silver touch? Perhaps we should deliver it to the lab with a transport helicopter instead of a truck? Third Generation Sequencing from heaven ....

So, stay tuned to watch our livestream on Facebook on June 28. It’ll be worth watching.

PS: For all who do not know it yet: Our PacBio RS is still the very first one installed in the labs of a commercial sequencing service provider in Europe.

The arrival of GATC’s – our – PacBio RS on June 28, 2011, will be remembered as a modern military operation.

Strategically planned and organized, precisely executed up to the nanosecond – and observed by an impressive number of European journalists plus a livestream on Facebook!

Normal people would get nervous.

Tobias Ost, Senior Field Applications Specialist of Pacific Biosciences, recently visited GATC Biotech in Constance for a site inspection and preparedness test: Nitrogen generator and compressor? Check. HVAC? Check. Hubble adapter? Check. UPS? Check. Floor flatness test? Check. Vibration test? Check. IT system? Check. 

The biggest challenge will be to get the 800kg machine into the 2nd floor. One bottleneck remains to be overcome: GATC's Door-to-Nowhere (a perfect name given by Tobias). The PacBio will have to be lifted lengthwise on a hydraulic ramp to get it through a width of 142 cm. Third Generation Strategic Planning is underway. Done by our CTO, Thoms Pohl, himself.

Stay tuned for the next installment.

PS: For all who do not know it yet: Our PacBio RS is the very first one installed in the labs of a commercial sequencing service provider in Europe.