Is it Bigger than a Breadbox?

Dan Koboldt at MassGenomics gives his take on the new Ion Torrent semiconductor sequencing instrument unveiled at the Advances in Genome Biology Technology conference in Marco Island, Fla., last week. Koboldt, who was able to view the new machine at the Ion Torrent suite, describes it as slightly larger than a breadbox. “The real engineering marvel is the semiconductor chip itself,” he writes, explaining the throughput achievable with the tiny chip that contains 1.5 million wells. In referring to the Ion Torrent CEO’s talk at the conference, the blogger writes “I can’t believe [Jonathon] Rothberg didn’t mention this ― an iPod Touch ships with each instrument, pre-installed with an app to monitor runs and cycles in real time. How cool is that?”