Fearing that 454 failed to compete.

[ajthomas]

In spite of the short read technologies getting longer, their read lengths still can't compare to that achieved on the 454. Of course, those longer "short" reads also means the number of applications where the 454 is required is shrinking. In my own case, I must have at least 400bp reads, and I'm excited about the longer reads of the FLX+ because that opens up the way for some other experiments I couldn't do before. It will be a while (maybe a long while) before the short read technologies can do what I need.

[rskr]

Will that save the 454? I think the next 6 months or so will tell. Their GS-FLX+ tech should be completely rolled out by then. If it looks good, that will probably encourage the Sanger-ites to convert and Roche could have another couple of years before Ion Torrent, Pac Bio, or some other technology completely eats their lunch. If, on the other hand, GS-FLX+ ends up having big problems, then yeah, I would say it is over for the 454.

--
Phillip

http://454.com/products/gs-flx-system/index.asp

I guess they are addressing the issue of the complicated error model by depth of coverage? What about ploidy?

[pmiguel]

Well, there is still lots of stuff being done on 3730's that probably should migrate to 454s. Although the amount of sequence generated per run by a 454 is trivial compared to an Illumina, it looks great compared to a 3730XL. A single 454 run generates as much sequence as a year's worth of 3730XL runs.

Sure there are some assays that still need the Sanger touch, but much of the reason people are still running those old Sanger war horses are that they don't want to have to deal with migrating their methodology from 3730XL to 454.

Will that save the 454? I think the next 6 months or so will tell. Their GS-FLX+ tech should be completely rolled out by then. If it looks good, that will probably encourage the Sanger-ites to convert and Roche could have another couple of years before Ion Torrent, Pac Bio, or some other technology completely eats their lunch. If, on the other hand, GS-FLX+ ends up having big problems, then yeah, I would say it is over for the 454.

--
Phillip

[rskr]

No takers?

It is sad, Illumina really needs the competition.

[rskr]

454 seems to have failed to compete. While the short read technology was developing, there were certain tradeoffs between longer reads with errors, for many common applications, so indeed there was a niche for 454, however these days short reads aren't so short, but 454 never seemed correct there errors. , and even for assemblies where length is an obvious advantage they still seem to depend on their competition for correction, whereas sipe and lipe have seemed to obviate the need for longer reads. Is 454 actively developing new chemistry that is going to be competitive, or are their machines going to wither on the vine?