41J Blog

DNA Sequencing Companies (Updated May 2020)

July 13, 2018, 4:19 pm

Below is a list of 40+ companies who either have a DNA sequencing platform on the market, or where there’s public information that they are developing a DNA sequencing/mapping platform. Below the main table is a list is mapping companies, many of which have sequencing related IP/approaches. There are a few cases where it’s not clear if the company is still active, I’ve tried to note this. If have any information on these companies, know of any others, or would just like to chat about sequencing companies/the sequencing market in general, feel free to email me (new at sgenomics dot org).

Disclosure: I’ve worked at a few of these companies, all the information presented here is based on public information.

Due to the width of the table, it’s best viewed on desktop.

Name	Further Info	Blog post	Status	Detection method	Single mol?	Chemistry	Location
Apton Biosystems	Company Website	1 2	Series A/B	Optical	Yes	?	Pleasanton, CA
Armonica Technologies LLC	Company Website	Blog	Seed?	Optical-nanopore	Yes	Direct (label free)	New Mexico – USA
Base4	Company Website	Blog	Series A+?	Microdroplet/optical (+nanopore)	No	Pyrophosphorolysis	Cambridge – UK
BGI (inc. Complete Genomics)	Company website	Blog	IPO	Optical	No	SBL/SBH	Mountain View – USA
Caerus Molecular Diagnostics	Company Website	Blog	Seed – 2014	Optical	Yes	SBS	Mountain View – USA
Centrillion	Company Website	Blog	Series B	Optical	No	SBS on Array	Palo Alto – USA
Cygnus Biosciences	News Article	Blog	Series B	Optical	No	SBS	Beijing – China
Depixus (was Picoseq)	Company Website	Blog	Series A	Unzipping force	Yes	SBL/SBH/Interference	Paris
Direct Genomics	Company Website	Blog	Unknown	Optical	Yes	SBS	Shenzhen – China
DNAe (DNA Electronics)	Company Website		Series A + X?	ISFET	No	SBS (unlabelled)	London – UK
Electronic Biosciences	Company Website		Seed+?	Protein-nanopore	Yes	Direct (label free)?	San Diego – USA
ElectroSeq	Genomeweb Article		Pre-seed?	ISFET	No	SBS?	New Mexico – USA
Element Biosciences	Blog	Blog	Series A	Optical?	No	SBS?	San Diego – USA
Esper Biosciences	SBIR Note		Seed?	Nanopore	Yes	?	Ithaca, NY
Genapsys	Company Website	Blog	Series C	Debye layer?	No	SBS	Redwood City – USA
Genedra Biotech Ltd	Company Website (dead)		Dead?	Optical	Unknown	SBS	Beijing – China
Geneseque	Company Website		Pre-seed?	Optical	Yes	SBH?	Norway
Illumina	Company Website		IPO	Optical	No	SBS	San Diego – USA
iNanoBio	Company Website	Blog	Seed	Nanopore – FET	Yes	Direct	Arizona – USA
inSilixa	Company Website	Blog	Series A	Optical+Other	No	SBS/Hybridisation	Sunnyvale, CA – USA
Intelligent biosystems (Qiagen)	Company Website		Acquired	Optical	No	SBS?	Netherlands
Ion Torrent (ThermoFisher)	Company Website		Acquired	ISFET	No	SBS (unlabelled)	Massachusetts – USA?
Lasergen (Agilent)	Company Website		Acquired	Optical	No	SBS	Texas – USA
Lightspeed Genomics	Company Website		Acquired?	Optical	Unknown	Unknown	Santa Clara – USA
Molecular Research Limited (Mobious)	Company Website		Seed? Alive?	Molecular Resonance Sequencing	Unknown	Unknown	Exeter – UK
Northshore Bio	Company Website	Blog	Series A	Solid-state nanopore	Yes	Direct (label free)	Camas, WA
Omniome	Company Website		Series A+	Undisclosed	Undisclosed	SBB	San Diego – USA
Oxford Nanopore Technologies	Company Website		Series I+	Protein-nanopore	Yes	Direct (label free)	Oxford – UK
PacBio	Company Website		IPO	Optical – ZMW	Yes	SBS	Menlo Park – USA
Personal Genomics/CrackerBio	Video	Blog	Series B	Optical Semiconductor	Yes	SBS	Taiwan
Qiagen	Company Website			Optical	No	SBS	Germany
Quantapore	Company Website		Series C	Optical-Nanopore	Yes	All bases labelled	Menlo Park – USA
Quantum Biosystems	Company Website		Series B	Nanopore/gap	Yes	Direct (label free)	Osaka – Japan
QuantumDX	Company Website	Blog	Series C+	Nanowire	Yes/No	Tags or SBS	Newcastle – UK
QuantumSi	Company Website	Blog	?	Optical – ZMW	Yes	SBS	Guilford, CT
ReadCoor	Company Website		Series A	Optical	No?	SBS?	Cambridge, MA – USA
Roche (Genia Technologies)	Company Website	Blog	Acquired	Protein-nanopore	Yes	SBS	Santa Clara – USA
Roswell Biotechnologies	Company Website	Blog	Series A	Nanogap	Yes	SBS-like	San Diego – USA
SeqLL	Company Website		Series A	Optical	Yes	SBS	Massachusetts – USA
Single Technologies	Company Website	Blog	Seed+	Optical	Yes	SBS?	Stockholm – Sweden
SingularBIO	Company Website (dead)	Acquisition	Acquired	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	San Francisco – USA
Singular Genomics	Note	Blog	Series B	Optical?	Various	Various	San Diego – USA
Stratos Genomics (Roche)	Company Website	Blog	Acquired	Nanopore (protein?)	Yes	Seq-by-Expansion	Seattle – USA
Ultima Genomics		Blog	Seed	Optical	No	SBS	Newark, CA – USA
Universal Sequencing Technology Corporation	Company Website	Blog	Seed?	Nanopore	Yes	Various	Stoughton, MA – USA
XGenomes	Company Website		Seed?	Optical	Unknown	Unknown	Boston – USA

Mapping

Name	Further Info	Blog post	Status	Detection method	Single mol?	Chemistry	Location
Genome Surveillance, Inc.	Online note		Pre-seed	Unknown	Yes?	Restriction map?	Wisconsin – USA
BioNano Genomics	Company Website	Blog	Series D	Optical	Yes	Nicking/fluorescent tags	San Diego – USA
OpGen	Company Website		IPO	Optical	Yes	Restriction mapping	Maryland – USA
Nabsys 2.0	Company Website		Series E+	Solid-state nanopore	Yes	hybridized tags	Rhode Island – USA
NanoString Technologies	Bio IT World Article		Series E+	Optical	No	hybridized tags	Seattle – USA
Ontera	Company Website		Series C?	Solid-state nanopore	Yes	Ionic?	Santa Cruz – USA

SBS: Sequencing-by-Synthesis

SBH: Sequencing-by-Hybridization

SBB: Sequencing-by-Binding

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Inheco Control 96 + CPAC Ultraflat Notes (TEC/Peltier)

June 19, 2018, 5:08 am

I picked up this Peltier system on eBay a while back. I guess it’s for heating eppendorfs as part of some larger system. The device is an example of the sub-contractors/assemblies all the way down mentality you see in so much industrial equipment. The control unit uses a Watlow 96 PID controller, and a Watlow LSTW driver, which they’ve put in an INHECO branded chassis.

When I received it the controller seemed to be misconfigured. The TEC wouldn’t heat, and could not be set beyond 50C. Datasheets for the CPAC Ultraflat state that it should be able to go to 70C. So I needed to do some fiddling to figure out what exactly was going on.

The LSTW driver doesn’t seem to be documented anywhere on the web, I couldn’t find anything similar on the Watlow website either, so it’s possibly some kind of custom OEM module they have… However, as far as I can tell it’s just an H-bridge taking a 12v input.

It’s controlled by two pairs of inputs from the PID controller, one sets the output positive, the other negative. So from what I can tell it’s using purely digital control.

Looking at the PID controller itself, output 1 and 2 are wired up. As is the RTD temperature sensor:

The Watlow control interface is a bit of a pain, but it’s functional enough once you know what’s going on, and I configured inputs/outputs as follow:

Sensor: Wired for 2 wire RTD 100Ohm Platinium.

Outputs 1 and 2 on, switched DC open collector output.

Output 1 set to control heating.

Output 2 set to control cooling.

I also set the control limits to +/- 100C. I’ve pushed it to 90C and it seems to work, though it takes a while to get up to temperature. Not sure what effect running it out of spec will have. Quick thermal image with a FLIR one below. When I can find my temperature probes I’ll probably try and do some more tests… That’s it for the moment, more pics below.

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5517B Laser Tripod Mount

March 20, 2018, 5:54 am

The 5517B is a dual frequency zeeman laser produced by HP/Agilent/Keysight for interferometry applications. When you buy it as a kit it often comes with a tripod, but most of the systems that turn up on eBay don’t have this tripod. When I’ve seen the tripods for sale, they’re about 1000USD.

So I 3D printed a really simple jig, you can find the STL files here: lasermount

It’s designed to fit a specific “bowl mount” tripod. This is the one I picked up on eBay: tripod.

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Veeco/Bruker AFM (nanosope) head teardown pics

March 19, 2018, 2:51 am

Some time ago I picked up a Veeco/Bruker AFM on eBay. The lot only contained the probe microscope itself (similar to that shown to the left). So, the control unit (a 2U box to electronics which contains among other things the high voltage drivers for the Piezo tube etc) was missing. One of the connectors was also damaged (unusable). They use fancy expensive connectors so replacing this one connector would cost about 100USD (the whole used unit was 400USD). For reference a complete new system is somewhere in the region of 200,000USD…

Anyway… I was pulling it apart recently and wanted to post some internal pics of the unit. These instruments are actually pretty simple (though I’ve not pulled apart the optical part just which I think is mostly just a quadrant photodiode…).

Mostly I was interested in how they do the coarse approach, here’s a picture of the complete coarse approach system extracted from the AFM:

The coarse approach uses a Portescap 30:1 geared stepper motor. This appears to be nothing particularly special, though it’s pretty low profile. That’s connected to a coupler. The coupler itself is kind of interesting. It connects the motor (using grub screws) to a adjuster on the Piezo head/stage. The connection to the stage does not use grub screws. This uses a hex/allen type head which just sits loosely in the coupler. I think this means that when the stepper is not engaged there’s less mechanical coupling between these parts. This possibly helps with vibration isolation. I found it interesting anyway, and I’d be curious to know where you can buy these kinds of couples (and the adjuster which the hex end). The adjuster looks to be something like 100TPI, though I didn’t measure it exactly.

The head itself, looks very hand made. You can see the piezotube and the solder connections to this without disassembling the unit. For the coarse approach, there are 3 adjusters. The one that is driver by the stepper (shown above) and two others hand driven (with knobs on) when setting up the instrument you’re supposed to do some manual adjustment before starting the approach to get the head kind of close (and the orientation right).

I’ve not looked closely at the rest of the electronics in the unit. I’d guess there’s nothing super interesting going on. It didn’t look like any of the high voltage drive electronics was present (the Piezo tube needs ~100V drive voltage).

Anyway… a bunch more pictures follow for reference: