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Flow cells are 1000$ each (unless you buy a lot of them), the sequencer is basically a USB dongle with a uC in it and all the important stuff is in the flow cel
by aFLH7U2daj 9y ago
Flow cells are 1000$ each (unless you buy a lot of them), the sequencer is basically a USB dongle with a uC in it and all the important stuff is in the flow cell. Flow cells are basically disposable (but you mail them back). You get one-ish use out of a flow cell though they can be "washed" and realoaded.
Reagent kits run a few hundred dollars depending on what your doing and you get several uses out of them.
IIRC it's not certified for use as a medical diagnostics device so it's "research only".
It's a nice system with great (none) upfront costs that has a lot of potential. But read quality and quanity per dollar aren't as good as what we get with our NextSeq (which by contrast costs something crazy like 300-400k)
- comstock 9y agoNextSeq is expensive, but there are cheaper options (from 30k) and you can just send your samples to a sequencing service. I’ve seen costs for a whole human genome at high coverage of between 1 and 3000USD.
- chrisamiller 9y agoBe careful about defining "high coverage" as 30x. Many applications (especially cancer) really require 100x or more to overcome purity and ploidy, or to identify subclonal populations.
- bayesian_horse 9y agoNo sequencer on its own will ever be certified. You always need a pipeline from sample to a clinically useful answer to be certified. The problem here is that everything in that pipeline keeps improving at a fast base. Also the reference databases are updated all the time. Whereas sequencing will probably always give the right answer to the precise question it was given, I don't see any luck in certifying these methods any time soon.