Complete Genomics, a U.S. firm affiliated with Chinese sequencing giant BGI, on Tuesday announced plans to launch a new line of sequencers it says can decode DNA in larger amounts — and at lower costs — than any instrument on the market.
The company claims the sequencer, dubbed DNBSEQ-T20, can read up to 50,000 human genomes a year, 2.5 times the max output of a line of new high-end sequencers that Illumina, the market leader, recently launched. And the cost of reading each genome will be as low as $100, which the company’s executives boast would be the lowest-ever price point since the figure includes the cost of the materials and chemicals used in sequencing as well as amortization of the machine.
But one detail was conspicuously absent from the announcement, issued at the annual Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting in Hollywood, Fla.: the total cost of the sequencer.
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