Mirror, Mirror Have You Leads, On My Strange HiFi Reads?

A core purpose of this space is to explore the current state of genomics technology.  Much of the time this is via distilling news reports, press releases and interviews with persons in the field.  But even more fun is to dive into actual data.  Such data is often accessed via the generosity of researchers who deposit open access datasets.  But it is also true that part of my professional responsibilities is to determine when new technologies and methods have applications at my day job, so I'm also charged in the day job with contemplating experiments to plumb sequencing systems.  Only by doing so can we ensure that we maximize our ability to perform cutting-edge synthetic biology.  A recent such experiment generated some curious data which I have obtained permission to share a subset of it publicly, as I'm scratching my head and hope that someone out in the community has insight.

Wall Street Bets Illumina Won't Acquire PacBio

The proposed PacBio-ILMN Merger remains an interesting spectator sport, with the UK's CMA looking for public input for the next round.  I don't usually pay attention to stock prices, but PacBio's current state presents too juicy a situations.  Just to be clear though: I do not hold any individual stock position in PacBio or Illumina (the bulk of my investing is in broad mutual funds, some of which certainly have bits of these companies).