454 Life Sciences’ Early Access Customers Present Promising First Sequencing Application Data with the New GS Junior System

At analytica 2010, a group of early access users shared their first results using the GS Junior System, a new bench top high-throughput sequencing platform for life science research use from 454 Life Sciences, a Roche Company. The presentations, which ranged from studies on targeted amplicon sequencing to whole genome sequencing of bacterial genomes, underscore the speed at which the researchers were able to progress from hypothesis to biologically relevant results.

Roger Wiseman, Ph.D. from the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, shared results from his team’s first project on the GS Junior System, which was recently installed in their lab. Using targeted amplicon sequencing with GS Junior Titanium reagents, they analyzed MHC diversity in a group of African green monkeys, one of the most widely used primates in biomedical research. With the data produced in a single GS Junior run, the team noted an unexpectedly low degree of MHC diversity. Their findings, which they plan to publish later this spring, may have implications on the use of this group of monkeys in vaccine and AIDS pathogenesis research.

“One of the most exciting aspects of the GS Junior System for our lab is the low barrier cost to running smaller, pilot studies,” explained Dr. Wiseman. “We have considered following up a previous study of green monkey MHC genetics, conducted before high-throughput DNA sequencing was available, for quite some time but it was not economical. Now that we have identified a biologically interesting result, we can go back and quickly follow up with more runs. However, if our results had come up inconclusive or not interesting, very little would have been lost.”

The showcase event also included a talk from Professor Daniela Steinberger, founder and CEO (medical) of bio.logis GmbH, which will be the first GS Junior System customer in Germany. The company plans to use the platform to unravel the genetic cause of hereditary forms of diabetes.

The GS Junior System, which is no bigger than a typical laser printer, has performance and features tuned to fit the needs of small to medium sized laboratories. The platform will launch with long-read GS Junior Titanium chemistry, offering 400 base average read lengths, and will be shipped with a desktop computer that is optimized for run processing and downstream data analysis.