Any experience with BGI?

[iquigley]

We have been amassing materials and whatnot for the lab's first RNAseq experiment, and we've been noticing that BGI's prices for generating libraries and running them to be fairly competitive (they say $450/0.5 Gb) and seemingly hassle-free (as compared to buying all the library construction/clustering kits etc. and running them ourselves). Does anybody out there have experience with these guys, positive or otherwise?

Many thanks for any insights.

[marcowanger]

We have been amassing materials and whatnot for the lab's first RNAseq experiment, and we've been noticing that BGI's prices for generating libraries and running them to be fairly competitive (they say $450/0.5 Gb) and seemingly hassle-free (as compared to buying all the library construction/clustering kits etc. and running them ourselves). Does anybody out there have experience with these guys, positive or otherwise?

Many thanks for any insights.

Do you have core facilities in your own institution? Quality competitive is more important than price competitive

[seeker]

what are people's experiences with BGI in terms of quality? In particular for RNAseq.

[marcowanger]

what are people's experiences with BGI in terms of quality? In particular for RNAseq.

Believe me or not. (I dont take any responsibility) BAD, I would say it. sucks for my personal dealing with them. If you want quality data, please go to your core facility or buy yourself a PGM

I think this forum is free to express my personal feeling, if you are okay with BGI, It is fine. If you are not familiar with BGI, go somewhere else, you probably get much better service and after sale experience elsewhere. Buzz factory deserves buzz comment.

[seeker]

Thanks for the input Marco. What exactly was the issue (or issues) in your case? Some dept.mates have had good experiences with de novo genome sequencing and would like as much info as possible before making any decisions.

Anyone else care to weigh in?

[marcowanger]

Ha? Do you believe RNASeq data takea half a year to deliver. And finally arrive as invalid fastq file AND sequenced with wrong techmology?

[seeker]

Ouch! This is the reason I'm looking to go elsewhere, my core facility has taken as long! Although the files look ok. Sorry to hear about your experience. That's rough.

[marcowanger]

That is good to look for alternative, but I dont think BGI would be your potential candidates. In your core facility, at least you know whom to complain to.

That is more than rough but sucks.

Sorry for my wordings.

Initially I dont walk to talk so much on my experience. But as you ask about it, I dont think i have any reason to hide.

[vebaev]

I'm pleased with my raw data and quality from small RNA-seq, BUT their bioinformatics miRNAs analysis was terrible and useless for publication (even wrong in some cases, I can prove it), so we have dome the analysis from the ground zero ourselves.

so I'm looking for some new companies before our GAIIx comes

[jo_mason]

We often reanalyse the data for local universities that BGI have generated because the bioinformatics support has been so poor. Data quality that we have seen has been variable, and we often hear complaints about the amount of time to get the results back. This is all second hand experience, as we carry out our own and customers sequencing ourselves.