UMGC installs a fleet of AVITI sequencing instruments

July 11, 2024

The University of Minnesota Genomics Center (UMGC) has recently acquired three additional AVITI sequencers from Element Biosciences. With this expansion to five instruments, the UMGC currently has installed the largest academic fleet of AVITIs in the United States.

With these new instruments, the UMGC is able to reduce AVITI run prices by 50% on average, by leveraging reagent discounts associated with a larger fleet. The AVITI is now our most affordable option for most sequencing projects.

In addition to lowering our costs, Element Biosciences’ innovations have delivered unprecedented raw sequencing data quality. In the first year of operating the AVITI platform, the UMGC routinely achieve modal raw Q scores of 43-44 (less than 1 error per 10000 bases).

Dr. Kenny Beckman, Director of the UMGC, has been pleased with the performance of the UMGC's AVITI. “The AVITI is simple to operate, easy to integrate from a data perspective, and the quality of the output is higher than with our legacy NGS instruments,” said Dr. Beckman. ”Its scale is a great fit for our clients, most of whom need both fast turnaround and low cost.” Read more about the recent press release from Element Biosciences. 

The UMGC will broaden its sequencing and multiomics capabilities by upgrading one of its current AVITIs to the “AVITI24” later this year. The AVITI24 will provide on-instrument-single-cell multiomic profiling.

More information about the AVITI instrument and pricing can be found here.