Ultima Genomics UG 100 Sequencing

The UMGC’s newest sequencing instrument, the UG 100 from Ultima Genomics, is an ultra-high throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) instrument purpose-built for the most sequencing-hungry applications. Radical cost reduction is at the core of its design, a system architecture that reflects the UG 100’s Silicon Valley roots. The bottom line: innovative hardware and chemistries enable human genome sequencing for $100 in raw sequencing reagent cost.

Technology

The UG 100 replaces a traditional flow cell with a massive, open-to-the-elements, flat circular silicon wafer (the foundational material of the semiconductor industry). During sequencing operation, this disk spins – like a CD or disk drive – enabling reagent dispensing (“spin-coating”) and continuous data acquisition from two fixed-position cameras. This inversion of the standard architecture – a moving wafer substrate, with fixed cameras as opposed to a fixed flow cell substrate, with moving cameras – accelerates sequencing and throughput. A ≥ 300-base median-length run is completed in roughly 20 hours.

The UG 100’s chemistry is also a departure from common single-base extension methods. Sequencing read-out is “flow-based”: only one type of nucleotide substrate is introduced per data capture cycle (a “flow”), thereby reducing errors by eliminating the need for base-calling. Because the UG 100 employs flow-based read-out, resulting read lengths are a distribution, with a median length of ≥ 300 bases (≈ 250 bases, post-filtering). With yields of 10-12 billion reads per wafer, this translates to ≥ 2.5-3.0 terabases of high-quality data per run.

A more complete discussion of the technology behind the UG 100 can be found on Ultima’s website and also in the foundational paper describing the technology.