Hacker News

43 points by surprisetalk 10 hours ago | 10 comments

ben1040 7 hours ago

I worked in this space for over a decade. It's so weird to me to see the workhorse sequencing hardware like the ABI 37x/37xx series, 454, and Illumina machines now as literal museum pieces.

searine 5 hours ago

Agreed. Seeing million dollar sequencers on ebay for a few thousand bucks makes me want to reach for my wallet, but the I realize there are no reagents for it anyway.

ben1040 4 hours ago

Back in 1999 I joked that the ABI 3700 looked like a $300K mini fridge. Now you could actually get one on eBay and convert one for cheap.

jonn_smith 5 hours ago

Nice writeup, but missing 2 newer sequencers:

Roche's Sequencing By Expansion platform and UltimaGenomics' platform

(edited for clarity)

mfld 4 hours ago

Yes, they are only mentioned in the last section. Other notable misses would be Ion Torrent and MGI. Still a nice article with a focus on the key technologies.

urza 5 hours ago

We need PC revolution for biology. Put a box on every table we can tinker with.

conception 2 hours ago

You can get a USB sequencer for about 150 bucks

voidUpdate 8 hours ago

So it's not just a strong magnifying glass and tiny tweezers?

adrian_b 6 hours ago

The nanopore technique described towards the end is not that far from your description.

dnautics 5 hours ago

they kinda tried that and it is my understanding that it sucks. One example of "direct linear mapping":

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5080/78a97f4778eee488e11032...