AGBT 2023 Is Nearly Upon Us!

AGBT is less than a week away in Hollywood Florida - and I've been letting everything else get ahead of writing anything here.  The JP Morgan Conference at the beginning of this month didn't have major fireworks from the sequencing vendors, but did have some news.

Perhaps the biggest splash is Element Biosciences pricing program enabling $200 (reagent cost) human genomes.  It's a volume discount plan and it apparently would require three AVITIs to pull off, but perhaps the most interesting part is it doesn't require a huge commitment - if your reagent purchases for a quarter are over the threshold, then you get the bargain price that works out to $200/genome.  If the next quarter you take a breather, no being locked into an expensive standing order.  Element looks like they're also going to be bringing longish short reads  - a 2x300 mode - to compete with the longer versions of Illumina.  There are some niches that love this format.  Element also has released data showing that 1 kilobase inserts work beautifully on AVITI and claim this can make a significant improvement on variant calling by often having one end more solidly anchored in unique sequence.

MGI has announced they will be selling sequencers in the US under Complete Genomics branding.  With four sequencers in their lineup, ranging from the portable E25 to the monster T7, Complete is aiming to sell to any user.

Singular Genomics seems to still be mired in instrument component supply chain issues; it will be interesting to hear an update from them at the meeting.

Illumina has landed lots of orders for the NovaSeq X.  Details on the Infinity chemistry still seem to be sparse; maybe the relaxed atmosphere of poolside can release some information into the wild.

PacBio has sold 76 of Revios as of JPM; that's around  the equivalent of 900 Sequel IIe boxes in terms of raw throughput.  They also announced a "PacBio Compatible" partnership program to build a support instrument, workflow, informatics and reagent ecosystem.  Expect to hear more about the Onso short read platform, which PacBio claims has spectacular accuracy.

Oxford Nanopore doesn't participate officially at JP Morgan or AGBT, but there will be plenty of users there and more than a few platform talks and posters using the technology.

Ultima will be one to watch for - not a major sponsor but they've also been featured in some interesting pre-prints recently.

There's lots of interesting talks on the agenda, leading to the ever present dilemma of whether to set up private meetings or hear the big science presentations.  As has been the trend, the meeting is very human-centric, though several viral surveillance talks are present and a whole session on non-human vertebrate genomics.  New technology talks seem to be few and far between, outside the major sponsor sessions.

I'm hoping to reconnect with a lot of old friends and make many new ones -- keep an eye out for the guy with a baseball cap (probably my Yellowstone NP) and glasses.   And as always, tips and suggestions are welcome in the comments, Twitter DMs or by email.