Welcome to the Explain Podcast!
The Podcast Explain is for everyone interested in DNA/RNA sequencing or technology in general.
Bioinformatician Daniel and scientific coordinator Iuliia (both from West German Genome Center in Düsseldorf) aim to EXPLAIN key next generation sequencing techniques and how these techniques contribute to our everyday life. As Iuliia doesn’t have a solid background in sequencing, she keeps asking “simple” – even silly at times – questions and Daniel gives his best to make us understand.
The Explain Podcast is recorded at the Medienlabor at Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf.
Our podcast is an outreach activity within the national genomics facility ”West German Genome Center” funded by DFG (No. 407493903).
You can listen to the podcast here or on your favorite platform (see buttons below) and you can find the full resolution infographics that accompany each episode here!
Enjoy!


The Podcast Explain is for everyone interested in DNA/RNA sequencing or technology in general.
Bioinformatician Daniel and scientific coordinator Iuliia (both from West German Genome Center in Düsseldorf) aim to EXPLAIN key next generation sequencing techniques and how these techniques contribute to our everyday life. As Iuliia doesn’t have a solid background in sequencing, she keeps asking “simple” – even silly at times – questions and Daniel gives his best to make us understand.
The Explain Podcast is recorded at the Medienlabor at Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf.
Our podcast is an outreach activity within the national genomics facility ”West German Genome Center” funded by DFG (No. 407493903).
H+ ions and where we can find them
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
04:26 pH
08:04 DNA Polymerase reaction with H+
12:30 Nucleotides
16:30 Homopolymer problem, but different
19:30 PCR is mean to some bases
24:30 AmpliSeq
33:40 Today’s status
38:58 cfDNA
40:00 PHRED vs Qscore
44:59 Chip scaling and prices
51:00 Outro
– bitesizedbio on the technology:
https://bitesizebio.com/27399/all-in-the-chip-ion-torrent-sequencers/
– Quick explainer from Basic Biochem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMUnN2Y48Us
– Slideshow giving an overview:
https://www.slideshare.net/USDBioinformatics/ion-torrent-sequencing
– biobinge explaining Iontorrent sequencing:
https://biobinge.pubpub.org/pub/its/release/1
– rna-seqblog showing a comparison to Illumina:
https://www.rna-seqblog.com/a-comparison-of-illumina-and-ion-torrent-sequencing-platforms-and-the-winner-is/
– Explainer by Shomu’s Biology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ch5189aaCU
Since 2018, West German Genome Center (https://wggc.de/) operates as the next generation sequencing facility and supports research in genomics & transcriptomics by providing expertise and sequencing services. WGGC is a part of the Next Generation Sequencing Competence Network (NGS-CN: https://ngs-kn.de/) – network of NGS core facilities in Germany.
Listen to our podcast and we're happy to receive your feedback&questions via Email ( podcast[dot]explain[at]gmail[dot]com ).
The Explain Podcast is recorded at the Medienlabor at Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf (https://medienlab.phil.hhu.de/).
Our podcast is an outreach activity within the national genomics facility ”West German Genome Center” funded by the DFG (https://www.dfg.de/) (No. 407493903).

You can also listen on Amazon music and on Podcastindex.