TECHNOLOGY FEATURE
24 July 2018
Correction 05 September 2018

The hackers teaching old DNA sequencers new tricks

Outdated genome-sequencing machines need not die — researchers can repurpose them to drive next-generation biochemistry studies.

Jeffrey M. Perkel

Jeffrey M. Perkel

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In a basement storeroom at Stanford University in California, the guts of a dozen DNA sequencers lie exposed — hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cameras and lasers, optics and fluid controllers, all scavenged from a late-model, next-generation Illumina DNA sequencer called GAIIx. On the floor, the shell of one old instrument sits empty, picked over like a carcass. “I seem like a hoarder,” says Stanford biophysicist William Greenleaf.

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Nature 559, 643-645 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05769-8

Updates & Corrections

Correction 05 September 2018: The referencing was incorrect in an earlier version of this article. This has now been corrected.

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