5500 Wildfire

[JPC]

Not as exciting as the Proton news but LifeTech have put out some brief info on the 5500 development roadmap.

http://find.lifetechnologies.com/5500wildfire/ngse-pod

- 2 to 5 fold increase in density
- reduced sample prep time
- improved reverse reads
- forward read length may increase towards 100bp

has anyone heard any other info on this?

JPC

[pmiguel]

I have heard it mentioned. It is similar to Bridge PCR, but different enough that ABI thinks it can win any infringement battles that Illumina launches against them. I would say the main issue is that this is little more than "vaporware" in all likelihood. My guess is that we will be looking at the same advertisement 1 year from now, similar to the timescales involved with roll out of the FLX+ technology from Roche.

That said, it would be nice to move away from the bead work. If ABI pushed, I am sure they could launch the product in a timely manner. But will they?

--
Phillip

[colindaven]

So what does this mean for nanobeads ? Will this technology replace them ?

[JPC]

I would assume so, this new system replaces the entire EZ bead prep, no more emPCR.

[pmiguel]

Anyone going to AGBT? According to the webinar there was going to be info about the release timeline updated there.

--
Phillip

[JPC]

I've just been told by AB that here in the UK the WildFire upgrade will be available in July and cost £70K. That will give you 16Gb/day output but it won't do paired ends reads until Q4 when the output will go up to 20Gb/day.

As run times will be increased they will limit you to 3 lanes per flow cell and they are suggesting a cost of US$25/Gb

[jimmyinfrance]

I heard something similar from the Lifetech France (although they are saying Sept for release). 69K euros, with specs along the lines mentioned by JPC. 5500 server needs to be updated (maybe included in the upgrade price?). I'd love to hear any comments re perforamce if there are any early access users out there???

[MrGuy]

I think it'd be cooler if they offered an option between 3 or 6 lanes as different upgrade options. Something like a 5500 Wildfire (tm) and a 5500 Wildfire XL (tm). Who cares if the computer is bigger, the S4 had a cluster under it. I'd rather load all the projects on 12 lanes, then go on vacation while it runs for a month.

Who's got early access? Anyone know?

[Chipper]

http://ir.lifetechnologies.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=678584

[Zaag]

I spoke with an early adopter, they had 2 5500xl machines and updated 1 of them to wildfire and now no one uses the old one anymore and they can't wait to get the next one. Quality was as good as before, it runs faster and it is less work. So I'm really looking forward to playing with it myself. Sorry I don't have real data of any sorts.

I think he said the three lanes offer the same output as do 6 lanes now so overall it is the same. Biggest con was that the readlength(for now) is only 50bp and PE is not possible yet. But they aim at reading the other strand instead of reading the same strand backwards, meaning they can achieve same read length reverse as forward in the same quality at the same speed.

[jimmyinfrance]

Anyone taken the plunge and upgraded to Wildfire? We likely to be doing it in the next few months. PE 50bp by years end apparently.

[Zaag]

We have one now, I'll be running an old sample this week. I will post the results.

[Zaag]

lane1: 240 million 0 mismatch barcode reads; 80% aligned to reference (hg19)
lane2: 200 million 0 mismatch barcode reads, 71% aligned to reference (hg19)

both lanes contained the same sample, only the amount we loaded at the slides to form colonies was higher in lane2

[Chipper]

How many raw reads did you get per lane?

[SeqTruth]

Library/adapter compatibility

Can anyone tell me if Wildfire will work with standard SOLiD libraries, or even better, what the Wildfire adapter sequences are?