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Announced by PacBio, known for developing sequencing solutions, SPRQ has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of sequencing genomes.

The company claims that these changes – which are also compatible with previously released Revio systems – would enable each instrument to sequence an average of 2,500 human whole genomes annually, with an average of $500 per human genome.

Christian Henry, president and CEO of PacBio stated, “We’ve seen tremendous demand for Revio systems over the last two years as many more researchers have discovered the superiority of HiFi technology in population sequencing and other human and non-human sequencing applications… Our team has achieved significant breakthroughs, which significantly improves the performance and reduces the cost of a HiFi human genome to less than $500 per sample. The SPRQ chemistry opens the possibility for more samples to be sequenced using Revio systems. This chemistry is compatible with all Revios in the field with just a very simple software update. Its launch is a true inflection point for PacBio – setting a new trajectory of customer adoption and scientific discovery.”

Using improved sequencing chemistry for the company’s previously released Revio long-read sequencing system, SPRQ reduces DNA input requirements by an average of four times, to as little as 500ng per sample. This enables more sample types to be analysed, including saliva samples, and also allows for pairing with other sequencing technologies such as HiFi sequencing for analysis of tumours. The different SPRQ chemistry also aims to improve sequencing performance, up to a 33% increase in yield per cell.

“Increased yields and reduced input requirements are a big win for our user community,” added Niall Lennon, chair and CSO of Broad Clinical Labs. “In studies where we had many samples that we could not have generated long reads on before, we were able to rescue 80% of these samples using the SPRQ chemistry. Higher success rates and lower costs for long-read data generation increases access to a wider range of scientific applications and accelerates the pace of discovery.”