1/2 read and coverage?

[Triticum]

hi!
sorry in advance for this stupid question, but i couldn´t figure it out anywhere:
what is 1/2 (or 1/8) run? does this only mean that half of the standard-time is used for sequencing, so providing just half of the data? and how is this related to the coverage? is coverage only a function of genome-size and sequenced megabases? so can i calculate the estimated-coverage out of the genome-size and the estimated totally-sequenced-megabases (depending on the number of runs and the 454-system used)?
i hope someone can help me, because this is confunsing me a bit!

many thanks. Triticum.

[Triticum]

or is 1/2 one half plate? but is it possible to seperate the plate physically to run e.g. 8x 1/8 runs on the same time?

[maubp]

or is 1/2 one half plate? but is it possible to seperate the plate physically to run e.g. 8x 1/8 runs on the same time?

Yes, the plates are physically separated and then multiple samples run at the same time (e.g. your DNA and another lab's DNA). Therefore they all get the full flow cyles and full read lengths. Most centres will offer as small as 1/16 of a plate.

[rglover]

We regularly use 1/16 of a plate for our experiments (metagenomics).