*New partnership will use the power of high-throughput sequencing to measure 
and understand marine life in our oceans at a rate that eclipses traditional 
research methods

Minderoo Foundation and Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN), today announced a 40 
million Australian dollar (US $27.8 million) partnership that will leverage the 
power of genomics to accelerate scientific understanding of marine systems and 
help marine conservationists make informed decisions. The three-year 
partnership demonstrates a shared commitment to conserving marine biodiversity 
and understanding the changing marine ecosystems on which people and national 
economies depend.

Minderoo Foundation's director of OceanOmics, Dr. Steve Burnell, said that 
scaling environmental DNA (eDNA) technologies and applying new computational 
and artificial-intelligence-enabled approaches have the potential to 
revolutionize our understanding of life in the ocean and our ability to protect 
it.

"By rapidly identifying species that may be endangered, invasive, or otherwise 
poorly understood, the research will contribute data and information to support 
timely and impactful marine biodiversity conservation," Burnell said. "Minderoo 
Foundation is committed to returning our oceans to a flourishing state."

Surveillance of marine ecosystems using eDNA can increase the resolution and 
sensitivity with which scientists understand biodiversity and can measure 
change. A cup of seawater can contain millions of pieces of eDNA and cells, 
providing a snapshot of the life forms present and, potentially, information on 
their population size and health. However, in typical seawater samples, more 
than 98% of the DNA sequences recovered belong to marine microbes. Through this 
partnership, innovations from the human health industry will be adapted to help 
enrich these complex marine samples for sequence information specific to marine 
vertebrates.

The partners will also engage in research and development projects to create 
high-throughput genome sequences from known marine vertebrates to enable 
identification of unknown eDNA sequences from seawater. Because only 1% of the 
roughly 21,000 known species of marine vertebrate genomes have been sequenced, 
one major objective is to create reference genomes from the wealth of samples 
already held in museum collections.

As part of this broad research and development partnership, Minderoo Foundation 
installed a NextSeq™ 2000 Sequencing System, one of Illumina's most advanced 
high-throughput benchtop DNA sequencers, aboard its research vessel.

Illumina Head of Global Commercial Strategy & General Manager of Asia Pacific 
and Japan Gretchen Weightman said installing the NextSeq 2000 directly onto 
Minderoo's research vessel has allowed the partners to demonstrate, for the 
first time, truly high-throughput sequencing at sea, enabling near real-time 
production of marine genetic information, from seawater samples to high-quality 
sequencing data, in a matter of hours.

"Backed by Illumina's leading technologies, researchers will gather crucial 
data and gain a greater understanding of the significant implications for the 
way the world's oceans are managed, considering commercial fishing and 
protection requirements," Weightman said.

ABOUT MINDEROO FOUNDATION

Established by Andrew and Nicola Forrest in 2001, Minderoo Foundation is a 
modern philanthropic organisation seeking to break down barriers, innovate and 
drive positive, lasting change. Minderoo Foundation is proudly Australian, with 
key initiatives spanning from ocean conservation and ending slavery, to 
collaboration against cancer and building community projects. To learn more, 
visit minderoo.org and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, 
Instagram, and Vimeo.

ABOUT ILLUMINA

Illumina is improving human health by unlocking the power of the genome. Our 
focus on innovation has established us as a global leader in DNA sequencing and 
array-based technologies, serving customers in the research, clinical, and 
applied markets. Our products are used for applications in the life sciences, 
oncology, reproductive health, agriculture, and other emerging segments. To 
learn more, visit illumina.com and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, 
LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

SOURCE: Illumina