Ultima Genomics...$80 Genome...$0 Genome...

Ultima have announced an update to the sequencer:

The availability of Solaris enables a more than 50% increase in output per sequencing run, to 10 to 12 billion reads per wafer, with costs reduced by 20% to $0.24 per million reads, enabling an $80 genome.

This was always on the cards, because Ultima use relatively large features in the micron range. Some optimization to ~1 micron or sub micron. Should push the throughput up 50%. This is perfectly feasible without resorting to super-resolution or super-high NA objectives (like Illumina).

Rather than using this throughput boost to increase their margins (tricky, because they’d have to increase the run cost) they are just selling this as a reduction in the cost/genome.

Great for users, but ultimately pretty meaningless unless it supports their continued existence..

Let’s try and run the numbers: