The Last Few Years In DNA Sequencing

Almost 4 years ago I wrote an article called “The Next Few Years In DNA Sequencing”. I thought it was time to review and see how I did.

First I suggested that we would see Illumina-style sequencers starting to appear:

therefore would expect at the very least for “genome analyzer 2” style instruments to start appearing. The Singular platform looks like this to me, probably using alternate nucleotides until 2024… that is if they actually launch before 2024.

But they probably won’t be the only player to take this approach. At the very least MGI will be unblocked from selling instruments in the US. And I suspect companies like Element are working on something similar.

None of these platforms were on the market in 2021 when I wrote the article. But you could more or less figure out what they were working on by looking at the IP. This has all played out as expected and consumers can purchase “Illumina-style” instruments from a number of vendors.

I think I got this right.

The question is, in what way does that fundamentally change the market. Well, for a start I expect it to put downward pressure on Illumina’s consumable pricing. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be any effective competition to Illumina. With these players appearing, with a similar data quality, and a similar error profile, I expect that many users will be able to switch platforms if they want.

Data quality from the new batch of sequencers is near equivalent to Illumina. I think I got this right too. Have margins taken a hit? At some point I should dig into the numbers, but some googling suggests they have: