The CBot
As my dear departed father used to say, “if you have to ask the price you can’t afford it”. Well, GenomeWeb don’t state their full prices, but from what I can tell it costs ~$1000/yr.
In comparison the fine publication you are reading is ONLY $199.99.
And does GenomeWeb provide quality content like detailed breakdown and analysis of 10 year old instruments? No.
Well, today I’m going to talk about another 10 year old instrument, HiSeq companion device: The CBot.
While the HiSeq X was released in 2014, it was only actually discontinued last year. What’s even more surprising is that the CBot seems to contain technology that stretches all way back to the original Genome Analyzer released back in 2006! That suggests that parts of the design were in-service for ~18 years!
What Is a CBot
The HiSeq was significantly less integrated than modern Illumina instruments, and as such the initial cluster generation chemistry happened on an external device called the CBot.
You’d load the sample, flowcell, reagent plate, and a disposable manifold into the instrument:
The CBot therefore necessarily had to duplicate much of the functionality of a DNA sequencer. In particular a temperature control system, and fluidic system.
The fluidic system however departs substantially from that used in the HiSeq itself. In the HiSeq, a vacuum chuck is used to hold the flowcell in place. In the CBot a special disposable manifold clips onto the flowcell:
This seems like an awful lot of effort, and I’m not entirely sure why this approach was taken. It certainly easier than using a vacuum chuck. But I don’t fully understand why this component needed to be disposable, rather than integrated into the CBot.
But perhaps it was just a stopgap on the way to their current solutions using flowcell integrated gaskets.
Inside The CBot
Inside the CBot we can see what enables this fluidic system: