Set the Date

Daniel MacArthur gives us the lowdown from AGBT, the annual sequencing bonanza. While there's a lot of good data being presented, the overarching theme is the evolving battle between third-gen sequencing companies, he says at Genetic Future. Illumina said in a presentation early in the week that they'd be able to "routinely generate 95 Gb (that's 95 billion bases, the equivalent of 30 human genomes) of DNA sequence per run" by the end of the year. "Most people I spoke to seemed to feel that Illumina's claims were quite realistic -- and they'd better be, because competition is coming from relative newcomers to the field." Complete Genomics CEO Clifford Reid brought the drama, as well as some preliminary data, in his talk. "I think there was little doubt in the audience's mind that this is a serious new contender in the DNA sequencing field," MacArthur writes.