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Semiconductors charge into sequencing

Nature Biotechnology volume 29, pages 805–807 (2011)Cite this article

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The convergence of semiconductor chips and DNA sequencing begets a strong contender in the race to build the best sequencers.

After much secrecy and mystery, a new approach to sequencing DNA known as 'ion sequencing' was unveiled in early 2010 and launched commercially later that year. But few details of the detection methodology were made public—until now. Writing in Nature, Rothberg et al.1 reveal the inner workings of their nonoptical, electronic sequencing instrument and sketch possible routes to future improvements in performance through increasing the number of sequencing reads produced per run. Sequencing of bacterial and human genomes on this instrument shows the promise of the technology to provide fast and inexpensive sequencing, but issues of quality and fidelity remain to be solved.

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Figure 1: Ion sequencing.

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  1. Keith Robison is at Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Keith Robison

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  1. Keith Robison
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Correspondence to Keith Robison.

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Robison, K. Semiconductors charge into sequencing. Nat Biotechnol 29, 805–807 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1965

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