GeneSeek expanding at NU's tech park

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BY DICK PIERSOL / Lincoln Journal Star

The plant and livestock improvement station on Innovation Drive is getting bigger again.  GeneSeek, a biotechnology company at the University of Nebraska Technology Park, is expanding. 

They're adding about 1,000 square feet to the 3,000 square feet they already occupy, said Abraham Oommen, one of the owners.

Led by Oommen and his partner, Daniel Pomp, a UNL faculty member, GeneSeek started with 600 square feet in 1998 in the Tech Park's business incubator program. The company provides plant and animal gene discovery and genetic diagnostic services. 

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Abraham Oommen, president of GeneSeek, uses a pippet to draw a DNA sample from an Eppendorf tube. (LJS File)

Abraham Oommen, president of GeneSeek, uses a pippet to draw a DNA sample from an Eppendorf tube. (LJS File)

GeneSeek received attention last year when the U.S. Department of Agriculture used GeneSeek's genetic testing to isolate the origin of an animal discovered in Washington state suffering from mad cow disease.

"We're running out of space in our lab," said Oommen.  "We're also trying to build a sample archiving system.   Most of those who send us a sample want us to bank it."

In five or six years, the company has accumulated several hundreds of thousands of samples, he said.

"That's going to be a big business ... a huge thing in the future, to take samples and archive them, for the food safety and animal identification kind of thing."

Oommen said GeneSeek has been adding some part-time help from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Southeast Community College and Nebraska Wesleyan University and may add some full-timers, too.  "Depending on how things go," he said.

Besides gaining prominence from its mad cow work, GeneSeek has become an attraction for the Technology Park. The operators of the Alpaca Registry Inc., the nation's genetic recorders for that species of fleecebearer, were attracted to the Technology Park in part by their relationship with GeneSeek, said Steve Frayser, president of the park.

GeneSeek has become the largest swine improvement company in the country, according to Frayser.

"When you're doing breeding, you want certain traits and you have to check the genetic material," Frayser said.  "(GeneSeek does) more of that confirmation of genetic material in swine than anyone else in the country, and they're getting awfully close in cattle."

Reach Dick Piersol at 473-7241 or dpiersol@journalstar.com