One Step Ahead: Roche’s New Genome Sequencer FLX System Featured at AGBT Meeting in Marco Island, Florida

Roche Applied Science and its joint development partner 454 Life Sciences celebrated the global launch of the new Genome Sequencer FLX System during the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) Meeting in Marco Island, Florida, from February 7-10, 2007. At AGBT, results of several recently completed sequencing projects across widely different applications using the GS FLX System (GS FLX) will be presented by a broad selection of customers and 454 Life Sciences scientists.

The GS FLX generates average read lengths between 200 – 300 bases (compared to 100 bases with its predecessor GS 20 instrument), depending on the application and the organism. Each run on the GS FLX generates on average 400,000 reads in less than 8 hours, a very high single read accuracy of greater than 99.5% over 200 bases and a consensus sequence accuracy of greater than 99.99%.

454 Sequencing is the enabling technology within the Genome Sequencer System and has revolutionized many research areas during the first year of its introduction. Examples include the sensitive identification of somatic mutations in cancer samples, the discovery of new classes of small non-coding RNAs, the characterization of microbacteria associated with obesity, and enabling the groundbreaking Neanderthal sequencing project.

“More than 40 peer-reviewed papers, 3 of which made the cover of journals such as Nature and Cell, have been published across a broad range of topics from small RNAs, whole genome analysis, metagenomics, and paleogenomics,” stated Manfred Baier, Head of Roche Applied Science. “Despite the ability of researchers to tackle research not previously possible with 454 Sequencing, we were keenly aware that the most frequent comment we heard from customers was that ‘100 base pair read lengths are simply not long enough.’ The Genome Sequencer FLX addresses the needs of our customers.”

First customer quotes asses the new system as very good. George Weinstock, Co-Director, Baylor College of Medicine - Human Genome Sequencing Centre, Houston, Texas said: “I am impressed by the significant improvements in read length and accuracy and believe that with the FLX the 454 platform is well positioned to displace existing technology for many applications.”
And Peter Pohl, CEO of GATC in Germany, expressed: "With the new GS FLX, Roche opened totally new markets in genomic science."

“Roche Applied Science believes that it is important to support the sciences by enabling researchers to use the technology to meet their broad based needs. This was the impetus behind the One Giga-Base Grant Program where we had over 130 grant applications from a wide variety of disciplines, including human health initiatives, metagenomics for microbial studies, complex genome studies for both plant and animal genomes, along with understanding gene regulation through transcriptome and small RNA studies,” said Tim Harkins, US-Marketing Manager, Genome Sequencing. The 1 Gigabase Grant Program launched in the fall of 2006 will provide 1 gigabase of sequence data to the winning grant applicant. The winner, as selected by an independent scientific board external to Roche Applied Science and 454 Life Sciences, will be announced during the GS FLX workshop at AGBT.

The combination of improved read length, throughput and, high single read accuracy, makes the GS FLX System suitable for a wide variety of innovative applications and provides researchers with an even higher data quality. In particular, long sequence reads are crucial to generate solid high quality data, such as in de novo sequencing, epigenomics (DNA methylation patterns, imprinting, and DNA packaging), metagenomics (study of genomes recovered from environmental samples), the identification of insertion and deletions in re-sequencing for medical research efforts, the analysis of alternative splice variants, plant sequencing efforts and many others applications. Many of the applications to the One Giga-Base Grant Program were clearly designed to leverage this combination of large numbers of long reads.