Illumina Boasts Genome Milestone

Claiming to have broken a metaphorical sound barrier, Illumina introduced a machine at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco last week that it says can sequence a human genome for $1,000. Sequencing at that cost has been heralded as inevitable in recent years given the fast pace of development in the field. The cost of sequencing stood at nearly $1 million in 2007. Initially, Illumina will sell its HiSeq X Ten Sequencing System with a set of 10 or more ultra-high-throughput sequencers, each generating up to 1.8 terabases of data in less than three days. Illumina says its first users are Macrogen, a sequencing service organization based in Seoul, South Korea; the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass.; and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia.