So Illumina now have four sequencers available; GAIIx, HiSeq, GAIIe and iScan sequencing module (are they still doing this?). All offer exactly the same applications, biochemistry and data. But they differ in output.
The GAIIx, GAIIe and iScan seq module (? but I will not really consider it here any more) use the same flowcells but generate very different amounts of data. How do they do this? Is it a smaller camera or fewer tiles? Could it be lower cluster density? Or is the data slimmed down computationally? With any of these I suspect there may be possibilities to increase the data volumes on GAIIe to GAIIx levels but on a system that costs significantly less.
Which one would you buy? Do PIs really want this in their lab, I know egos can be large enough but wallets have a limit. Surely it makes more sense for groups to come together to get the output of HiSeq with only the overhead of one instrument, and a significantly easier one to operate based on my experience and current understanding of HiSeq.
The GAIIx, GAIIe and iScan seq module (? but I will not really consider it here any more) use the same flowcells but generate very different amounts of data. How do they do this? Is it a smaller camera or fewer tiles? Could it be lower cluster density? Or is the data slimmed down computationally? With any of these I suspect there may be possibilities to increase the data volumes on GAIIe to GAIIx levels but on a system that costs significantly less.
Which one would you buy? Do PIs really want this in their lab, I know egos can be large enough but wallets have a limit. Surely it makes more sense for groups to come together to get the output of HiSeq with only the overhead of one instrument, and a significantly easier one to operate based on my experience and current understanding of HiSeq.
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