What's Hot

This week, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News' Harry Glorikian and Brian Clancy round up what they call "sequencing trends worth watching." The first, they say, is the polarization of sequencing activity — "an increasing share of total high-throughput sequencing activity being conducted by the largest and smallest sequencing labs … driven by a series of centralization and decentralization forces that are acting on the space simultaneously." Glorikian and Clancy suggest that a "second major trend to watch is workflow value shifts, which can be defined as a period of more pronounced decommoditization and commoditization of resources used in the high-throughput sequencing workflow beyond the sequencing instrumentation and consumables themselves." The authors expect improvements to second-generation sequences will drive the relative value of overall workflow-related "instruments, consumables, software, IT infrastructure, and expertise." Finally, the duo points to the "diffusion" and "omnipotence of sequencing technology" as two trends of significant interest within the community. Glorikian and Clancy say "the gradual diffusion of high-throughput sequencing technology outside of the realm of genomics and into the analysis of other analytes including small molecules, proteins and peptides, and intracellular phenomena across research, clinical, and commercial applications" is a trend to watch in the coming years.