Advantages of the Genome Factory

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my visit to Mountain View-based Complete Genomics, a DNA sequencing company with a novel service-based approach (rather than selling sequencing instruments they sell whole genome sequences, generated in their highly automated facility). The company has just launched a corporate blog; that's not always a good thing, but the two authors (CEO Cliff Reid and CSO Rade Drmanac) are both interesting guys, so I'm looking forward to seeing what emerges over the next few months.

Reid's first post is certainly worth reading: it provides some insight into the extent to which Complete has dedicated itself to the single-minded focus of creating a streamlined, automated production facility for churning out genome sequences. Reid explains the basic thinking behind this strategy:

The sequencing industry is now undergoing a big change with the emergence of the first standard sequencing project, the human genome. Instead of sequencing different organisms or parts of organisms, researchers (and an emerging group of clinicians) need to sequence thousands of complete human genomes — exactly the same organism and bases — over and over again. The inputs and outputs are standardized, and the sequencing process is identical every time. These projects don’t need the flexibility of the past; they need extremely high reproducibility and high accuracy at extremely low cost.

These standardized, repetitive human genome sequencing projects can be done using a flexible sequencing technology, but there is a better method: the automated factory approach. Developing dedicated technology and a specialized work flow — inflexible, but optimized for human genome sequencing — results in higher quality due to better reproducibility through automation and lower costs due to economies of scale.

This approach seems to be paying off so far: Complete announced last week that it had shipped 600 complete genomes to customers in the first quarter of 2011, and investment analysts are responding very positively to the company's progress. The company currently claims to have captured around 40% of the whole genome sequencing market; if it can maintain that position as the demand for clinical sequencing explodes over the next few years it will be doing very well indeed.

From my selfish perspective as someone interested in personal genomics, the advantage here is competition: the better Complete does, the tighter the arms race between it and primary competitor Illumina will become. That means increasingly lower prices for genome sequencing, which in turn means the date at which I can afford to get my own genome sequenced approaches at an ever-accelerating pace.