Carol Churcher: archives

Records from Carol Churcher's sequencing work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton. Includes information on sequencing protocols c1986-2006; material on the first automated sequencing machine used at the LMB, an ABI 370A; material from her pathogen sequencing work; and a guide for using Staden software dated March 1992.

Donated by Mrs Carol Churcher in July 2013.

Whilst Head of Sequencing Operations at the Sanger Institute, Carol Churcher was interviewed about her work for the public engagement website Your Genome.

Catalogued by Jenny Shaw, July 2013.

Carol Churcher gained a BSc in biological sciences from Lancaster University and then worked as a research technician on the influenza virus at the Department of Virology, University of Cambridge from 1978 to 1986. In 1986 she joined the cytomegalovirus sequencing project at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB). Churcher was at the LMB when they bought their first automated sequencing machine in 1988. This is believed to have been the first lab in the UK to have bought such a machine.

When the Sanger Centre was established in 1993, Churcher moved there and led a yeast sequencing team. These later became pathogen sequencing teams and Churcher was involved in sequencing the genome of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (published 1998) and the parasite that causes malaria (published 2002).