We are excited to announce our newest Single Molecule, Real-Time sequencer, the Sequel™ System. Watch this short video to learn about this exciting evolution in SMRT® Sequencing. The Sequel System provides higher throughput, more scalability, a reduced footprint and lower sequencing project costs compared to the PacBio® RS II System, while maintaining the benefits of SMRT technology. The core of the Sequel System is the capacity of its redesigned SMRT Cells, which contain one million zero-mode waveguides (ZMWs) at launch, compared to 150,000 ZMWs in the PacBio RS II. Active individual polymerases are immobilized within the ZMWs, providing windows to…
Last month we hosted a SMRT® Informatics Developers Conference, bringing together 150 developers with a passion for improving tools and resources. Our team came back brimming with enthusiasm for tools that will be released in the coming months, and humbled by the commitment we saw from the bioinformatics community to help scientists make SMRT Sequencing data increasingly useful. Thanks to the National Institute of Standards and Technology for hosting our meeting on their campus right before the Genome in a Bottle workshop.The big news we shared with attendees is that the PacBio® System will now output industry-standard BAM files instead…
If you’d like to hear about the latest applications of SMRT® Sequencing from users, we have several events coming up. Our worldwide user group meetings and workshops feature PacBio users sharing their latest research, tips, and protocols, as well as our staff providing training and updates on products and methods to optimize your research. We’re always humbled by the quality and variety of science presented at these meetings. And for the bioinformatics crowd, we have a new event in August focused on developing new analytical tools for PacBio® data. Here’s more detail on each event, including registration details: Americas East…
Emerging from a myriad of interesting genome nominations, from the American cranberry to South American prawns and African Guava, Oropetium thomaeum submitted by Todd Mockler at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center was selected as the first winner of the “Most Interesting Genome in the World” SMRT® grant program in 2014. Also affectionately known as Oro, this grass species can be revived with water after a long drought exposure. At 250 Mb, the genome is also the smallest amongst grasses due to compaction of complex repeat and gene structures, including previously identified expansions in osmoprotectant biosynthesis pathways. Kicking off the…
The Gallus gallus (common chicken) genome was initially published in 2004, but the latest RefSeq and Ensembl annotations remain incomplete. The chicken is an important model organism, especially for research on embryogenesis and heart development. In a new paper published in PLOS One, researchers representing the Cardiovascular Development Consortium of the Bench to Bassinet Program and Pacific Biosciences describe work to improve the chicken genome annotation using SMRT® DNA Sequencing. In “Long-Read Sequencing of Chicken Transcripts and Identification of New Transcript Isoforms,” the consortium describes how they used SMRT sequencing to generate full-length cDNA reads from embryonic chicken hearts, combined…