Ultima Genomics asks for $100 full genome sequencing after stealth $600M raise
- ByStartupStory | June 1, 2022
The appetite for genomic data continues to rise in the field of biotech and pharmaceutical research, but the cost is still a factor — even sequencing a full genome now costs as little as $1,000. But with claims of reducing that cost by another order of magnitude to $100, Ultima Genomics may even further accelerate this economy.
Ultima says that its sequencing machine and software platform, the UG 100, can perform a complete sequencing of a human genome in about 20 hours, with precision comparable to existing options, but does so at a far lower cost per “gigabase,” which is to say per million base pairs of DNA analyzed.
The technical advances may not be entirely intelligible to people who are not already familiar with how DNA is sequenced, and not being an expert myself I won`t attempt a full explanation. But it helps to understand that essentially the DNA, amplified in a reagent (so basically a lot of the same DNA in a solution), is passed through small channels where fragments bind to certain microscopic mechanisms, which prepare it to be imaged by a lot of base detectors operating in parallel. These sequences are then reconstructed throughout the genome by ligating their ends.
Ultimate demand will triple. First, a micromachine (“a high-density array of electrostatic landing pads”) is etched onto a 200 mm silicon wafer. Instead of flushing the reagent through the flow path, it should be flushed in preparation for the next step. This well-known method can be mass-produced using cheap and readily available inventories.
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