Illumina announces availability of its newest reagent kits for MiSeq benchtop sequencer

Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) today announced the availability of its newest reagent kits for the MiSeq, the industry's most accurate and easiest-to-use benchtop sequencer. The improved chemistry doubles sequencing output to 15 gigabases (Gb) by increasing the number of sequencing reads (up to 25 million reads) and overall read length (up to 2x300 base pairs). These innovations enable researchers to perform new applications including exome sequencing on the MiSeq.

“The new MiSeq kits are another example of how we are focused on continually improving the performance and value of our sequencing platforms for our customers”

In addition, increased sequencing reads will support transcriptome applications such as mRNA sequencing and will offer higher throughput capacity for gene expression profiling with Illumina's TruSeq Targeted RNA Expression assay. The benefits of increased paired-end read lengths include improving the quality of genome assemblies and advancing applications that require longer read lengths, such as metagenomics and human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing.

"The new MiSeq kits are another example of how we are focused on continually improving the performance and value of our sequencing platforms for our customers," said Christian Henry, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Illumina's Genomic Solutions business. "The latest MiSeq system enhancements deliver the highest data quality and will open up new applications for researchers in markets as diverse as cancer, genetic disease, microbiology, agriculture and forensics."

Added Dr. Ellen Heitzer of the Institute for Human Genetics, Medical University of Graz in Austria, "As a beta customer, we have seen even more robust MiSeq performance with the new chemistry, including the ability to pool more samples for our circulating tumor assay. We've also seen excellent sequencing quality, with almost 90 percent of clusters passing the filter and 96 percent of reads with a quality score greater than 30. In addition, the longer read length will facilitate the identification of translocations and fusion genes for our target resequencing approaches."