Soon after Illumina announced its HiSeq 2000, it also announced the GA IIx's little brother, the GA IIe. The IIe will produce about half as much data as the IIx, but no one seems to know exactly how this is done. The unit is cheaper than the IIx, $250,000 for the IIe compared to $400,000 (I think) for the IIx, but is upgradeable to the IIx. So perhaps the optics system is cheaper. But the... Full Post
Please consider writing your representatives in Congress to support the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752 and H.R. 1286); a bill that will greatly limit the damage done by the recent Supreme Court decision overturning a century of election law. Change Congress makes it easy to email your representatives. See the video below for one reason why this is important. Update: Added video. Full Post
Earlier this week Life Technologies announced the next revision of their SOLiD platform, SOLiD 4. I don't have all the details that I had for the Illumina HiSeq 2000, but here is what I do know: the system will produced 100 Gb of alignable sequence data on two slides per 14 day run. The sequence data will be paired-end, 50×35 base reads. Reagent costs for each run will be about $6,000. Since you need about... Full Post
So much for populist rage. We better be careful to not anger Wall Street tycoons. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Obama Takes On Bankers www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis Full Post
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) posted a couple stories that discuss, directly and indirectly, the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project. The first, St. Jude, Washington University Launch Genome Project for Childhood Cancers, is, obviously, about the project. The second is A Conversation about Sequencing Cancer Genomes with Dr. Elaine Mardis. Full Post