Biotechnologies

For the first time in nearly a decade there is a new choice in commercially available DNA-sequencing platforms. As a result there has been a flurry of development activity that promises to lead to other new platforms being generally available. This has energized the sequencing community and, more than ever before, encouraged new entrants into the field.

The achievement of the human genome project was entirely performed by fluorescent Sanger di-deoxyribonucleotide sequencing, which was almost exclusively provided by Applied Biosystems. Other vendors also supported fluorescent/Sanger-based methods, including Molecular Dynamics (GE Healthcare), Beckman Coulter, and LiCor Biosciences, but Applied Biosystem’s ABI 3700 was the workhorse for the first mammalian genome. As a consequence there are more AB machines in modern laboratories than any equivalent devices......