Entering edit mode
6.0 years ago
Istvan Albert
101k
In the news:
It is interesting to consider what this means - is short read sequencing on the downtrend? Or is a business move to limit PacBio's potential and keep selling short read sequencers.
I will make a note to say that SAM/BAM files are inappropriate representation for long reads - even Heng Li's minimap2 invents a new format paf to deal with long read alignments.
I don't know what it means, ultimately; however, I am noticing a trend of Illumina never actually inventing anything by itself and instead buying ideas / products from independent groups / businesses. They never even invented the short read technology behind SBS in the first place.
inventors don't make for good business people, take the MinION as an example. Great technology - cool concept, inefficiently run as a business and still languishing.
In time Illumina will be knocking on that door too :-)
I wonder when Roche will step in back to the sequencer market ...
That is an interesting point.
Since I just looked into it more, perhaps some people would like to read more about Pre-2007 Illumina from a couple sources:
https://www.illumina.com/science/technology/next-generation-sequencing/illumina-sequencing-history.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illumina_(company)
It may mainly be some IP held by PacBio that is attractive. It also gives them an option in the 30-50 kb read range where there was none before.