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'Small, Fast'

Feb 24, 2011

The first ever "personal-computer-like" DNA sequencer, what most researchers couldn't wait to have, is getting even faster, says Forbes' Matthew Herper. The Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine, which launched in December, will be even more powerful — about 100 times more — by the end of the third quarter of this year, the company has said. "That means that the PGM will be able to sequence 1 billion letters of DNA code in two hours," Herper says, "making it much more competitive with a rival machine, the MiSeq, developed by Illumina."

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