New customers must initially contact orc@usask.ca to request a quote. Ideally, this request happens after the customer had booked a free-of-charge consultation with the ORC lab manager in person or online via Teams. Click here to book a consultation. 

After written acceptance of the quote by the customer, they receive access to the Customer Portal for providing their contact and financial information, placing a service request and providing any required information related to their project and samples.

The ORC Lab Manager will review the service request and permit the sample submission based on the completeness of the information given.  

You can submit any solid or liquid crude sample and FFPE sample for nucleic acid (NA) extraction and downstream processing (e.g. sample QC, NGS library preparation, sequencing).

Alternatively, you can also submit any nucleic acid samples (cDNA, RNA, DNA) and library pools for processing and/or direct sequencing.

Click here to view ORC’s Sample Submission Guideline and follow the guide's detailed instructions. 

For samples that are new to our workflows, we may ask you to submit a few test samples (if available) before your project sample submission. 

We strongly recommend submitting crude samples in either 2 ml DNA microcentrifuge tubes with Safe-Lock or Snap-Lock design (e.g. Eppendorf or Axygen) or in 96-deep-well plates (e.g. Greiner Bio-One Masterblock® 96-Well 1ml Deep Well).  

For nucleic acid extracts or library pools, we require their submission in nuclease-free sterile 1.5 ml low-binding DNA microcentrifuge tubes with Safe-Lock or Snap-Lock design (e.g. Eppendorf or Axygen) or in standard skirted or non-skirted 96-well PCR plates.  

When submitting 96-well plates, they need to be covered by an adhesive seal when stored in standard -20 C freezers and fridges (e.g. Thermo Scientific™ Adhesive PCR Plate Seal), or they need to be thermo-sealed when stored at -80 C or in liquid nitrogen (e.g. LGC Easy-peel well plate seal). 

We require printed labels or legible handwriting that includes a running integer per sample (e.g. 1, 2, 3…n) on the top and on the side of a tube in addition to the ORC Estimate ID (e.g. JOHN_DOE_WCVM-ORC-25-0521-3) on the tube box as per sample submission documentation. Alternatively, you can submit samples in 96-well plates which are required to be labelled with the ORC Estimate ID on the top and side. 

Detailed information can be found in the ORC Customer Portal, the ORC Sample Submission Template, and the ORC Sample Submission Guideline.

If you cannot transfer your samples into the requested sample submission formats (i.e. larger volumes or amounts and/or other sample storage container formats)m ORC will add project-specific surcharges for extended sample handling to your estimate. Please click here to view ORC’s Sample Submission Guideline. 

Yes, ideally you accompany your sample submission with a gel image or Bioanalyzer/Tapestation traces and information. Please provide this information through the ORC Customer Portal or by email to orc@usask.ca accompanied with the completed ORC Sample Submission Template.  

If you do not accompany QC data with your processed samples (i.e. NA extract or NGS libraries), ORC will provide the QC service for you and will add these costs to your estimate.  

Yes, ORC offers a direct sequencing service that includes the QC and quantification of your library pool and the sequencing on our AVITI sequencer. We do prefer the submission of library pools over submission of individual libraries. Library pools must be submitted in nuclease-free sterile 1.5 ml low-binding DNA microcentrifuge tubes with Safe-Lock or Snap-Lock design (e.g. Eppendorf or Axygen).

You are required to accompany your samples with an Excel file containing the index and adapter information through the ORC Customer Portal or together with the ORC Sample Submission Template to orc@usask.ca. 

The authorized email for data access is the email address used to place an order through the ORC Customer Portal or the ORC Sample Submission Template. Upon order completion, you will receive a data release email with download instructions. ORC’s standard process for all on-campus USask customers and most external academic/non-profit institutional facilities is data delivery through the Globus platform using your institutional account and sign-on credentials.  

For non-institutional external customers, ORC shares the data as a Globus Guest Collection. ORC creates a special folder on its Globus endpoint, grants the customer specific read permissions, and sends the customer a link to access that folder directly through the Globus web app. The customer will then be prompted to authenticate using a temporary, one-time identity to download the files.  

In case the standard process for data delivery does not work for you, ORC may be able to deliver the data directly to your AWS S3 bucket. Or, as a last resort, you can choose to have data shipped on a hard drive purchased by ORC and invoiced to the customer at a cost of C$300 per hard drive. 

If you encounter any problems downloading your data, please report the issue in a reply to the data release email. 

If you get the "Permission denied" error, it means that your current account does not have access to this folder. Please go to "Settings" (tab on the left side) and see what is reported as the "Identity." This error indicates a mismatch between the login email/account and shared email/account. To remedy the issue, follow these steps: 

• From the ‘Settings’ page, select "Link another identity" found on the top right of the screen 
• Follow the prompts and select your institution from the list. Or, if you cannot find it, select the “You can also link an email address to your Globus account” link. 
• Link your current account to the email address you would like to use and follow the confirmation steps. 
• Retry accessing the shared collection. 

If you are still having trouble, please email orc@usask.ca and request that the reported email/account be added to your folder for your project (please list the ORC Estimate ID/quote number). 

If you can access the collection but the page will not load and instead reports “Retrieving directory contents” for an unusual amount of time, it is possible that the content is being blocked by your institutions firewall. This appears to be a common issue for some institutional partners.

Please contact your IT team to allow Globus traffic on your network. As well, please contact orc@usask.ca to report this issue and get a fast resolution. 

ORC will deliver the order results in FASTQ format (raw reads and quality scores), unless other formats are requested on the quote and the customer agrees to pay additional charges, if any.

In addition, the sequencing orders will include a methods document and a summary of some overall sequencing statistics for each sample. Optionally, the customer can request the adapter sequences to be trimmed free of charge. 

ORC holds the data and samples for a limited timeframe (maximum of two months from the release email) and recommends downloading or transferring the data as soon as possible.  

If you wish to claim your libraries or leftover crude samples and extracts (if available), please state this in a reply to the data release email. After the two-month archival period, the customer’s raw data will be destroyed without further notice to the customer.  

While ORC does not currently offer data analysis services, we do plan to offer this service in the future. Nonetheless, we are happy to help get you started with your analysis through guidance in analysis software selection.  

For example, if you are looking for a bioinformatic program with a graphical interface, Galaxy and Geneious are two popular and powerful tools with plenty of documentation. KBase is also a great cloud-based platform that hosts many common command-line packages in point-and-click format along with a plethora of premade pipelines and tutorials.

For more information, visit the ORC consultation section to book a session.

ORC offers LoopSeq workflows to produce synthetic long-read using AVITI short read sequencing and LoopSeq bioinformatic pipeline. Customers can submit either crude or nucleic acid samples. The following LoopSeq assays are available: 

• Long Read Amplicon 
• Full-length 16S/18S rRNA 
• Long Read Transcriptome 

For more information, view ORC's Services and Pricing sections or click here to book a consultation.

No, the booking equipment is limited to the following instruments:  

• Agilent Tapestation 4200  
• Agilent Synergy LX Microplate reader 
• Quantstudio 3 real-time qPCR systems  
• KingFisher Apex Nucleic Acid Purification System  
• Invitrogen™ Countess™ 3 FL Automated Cell Counter 
• Miltenyi Biotec gentleMACS™ Dissociator 

Yes. For detailed information, please review ORC’s Equipment Booking Guidelines. 

ORC services are co-ordinated based on project size, urgency and staff availability. Standard turnaround times vary, but here are the typical tiime ranges: 

• two to three weeks for end-to-end services (i.e. crude sample prep + library prep + sequencing)
• one to two weeks for sequencing only (libraries already prepared)
• one to two days for instrument booking or short consultations

ORC will be closed for specific holidays, and we will be unable to accept packages during those days. Additionally, the closures will offset the typical turnaround times for orders. Please plan ahead when shipping your samples. 

ORC closures: 

• National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (Sept. 30)  
• Saskatchewan public holidays 
• USask winter break: December 23, 2025, to January 4, 2026  

ORC provides access to complex genomic technologies and offers guidance in experimental design. One measure of our impact on the USask research community is the number of publications that ORC supports. ORC requests that any data generated using ORC resources (presented in a publication, grant proposal, poster or presentation) be formally acknowledged.

For more details on the best format for acknowledgment, review ORC's Terms and Conditions.