{"id":3287,"date":"2016-02-13T21:48:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T21:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/?p=3287"},"modified":"2016-02-13T21:58:10","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T21:58:10","slug":"further-details-on-the-illumina-firefly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/further-details-on-the-illumina-firefly\/","title":{"rendered":"Further Details on the Illumina Firefly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AGBT has come and gone, and with it further details of the Illumina Firefly platform have appeared. The <a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/speculation-on-the-illumina-firefly\/\">speculation I previously posted<\/a> appears to be largely correct. Genomeweb has an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.genomeweb.com\/sequencing-technology\/agbt-illumina-provides-additional-details-project-firefly\">excellent report<\/a> on what was presented by Jay Flatley. From the Genomeweb article we note &#8220;The Firefly device is essentially a CMOS sensor with nanowells. The nanowells are fabricated over photodiodes to enable DNA deposition to be aligned one-to-one with each photodiode. Clustering and sequencing then occurs directly on the CMOS chip.&#8221; and that Jay said it&#8217;s &#8220;inherently a one-channel device&#8221;. This means that they are using a single photodiode per well, unlike <a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/personal-genomics-inc-crackerbio\/\">CrackerBio<\/a> who have suggested that a triple-junction photodiode could give a decently specific signal dependent on differing wavelength.<\/p>\n<p>A new chemistry has been developed for this one-channel system. He appears to have suggested that a dye needs to be cleaved and another added during imaging. That makes sense of course, but does add complexity to the chemistry. It likely means at least a slight decrease in read length\/increase in error rate (all other things being equal, which of course they are not).<\/p>\n<p>Using a single photodiode is the conservative move at this point, and makes sense to me when introducing an entirely new detection mechanism. Jay also said that they&#8217;ve demonstrated 150bp reads and error rates similar to the HiSeq X (to which I would say as always &#8220;show me the data&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Announcements like this are interesting. Jay said it was because it would be difficult to keep it secret as they will be ramping up their supply chain. I&#8217;m not sure I buy that, they&#8217;re a public company and there&#8217;s always a pressure the break into new markets, release something new, and show share holders that things will get better and better.<\/p>\n<p>Disclosure: While I generally try and remain unbiased. I have worked for multiple DNA sequencing companies, I continue to work in sequencing, I have interests in sequencing companies. As always, you should form your own opinions based on the facts available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AGBT has come and gone, and with it further details of the Illumina Firefly platform have appeared. The speculation I previously posted appears to be largely correct. Genomeweb has an excellent report on what was presented by Jay Flatley. From the Genomeweb article we note &#8220;The Firefly device is essentially a CMOS sensor with nanowells. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1RRoU-R1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3289,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions\/3289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}