A large genome center's improvements to the Illumina sequencing system

Nat Methods. 2008 Dec;5(12):1005-10. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.1270.

Abstract

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's largest genome centers, and a substantial amount of our sequencing is performed with 'next-generation' massively parallel sequencing technologies: in June 2008 the quantity of purity-filtered sequence data generated by our Genome Analyzer (Illumina) platforms reached 1 terabase, and our average weekly Illumina production output is currently 64 gigabases. Here we describe a set of improvements we have made to the standard Illumina protocols to make the library preparation more reliable in a high-throughput environment, to reduce bias, tighten insert size distribution and reliably obtain high yields of data.

MeSH terms

  • Academies and Institutes*
  • Chromosome Mapping / instrumentation*
  • Equipment Design
  • Genomics / instrumentation*
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction / instrumentation*
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / instrumentation*