The State of Sequencing Companies 2023

This post aims to help provide a basic understanding of the current state of the genomics industry, who the major companies are, and why this is so interesting!

Let's start from the end; why is genomics fascinating? The genomics industry is helping us develop a new lens for understanding biology. Imagine being given a completed Lego build. You need to figure out how it was built, and the instructions are in a different language. Some technologies let you see the outside in great detail; others work by allowing you to break the set apart to figure out how it might have been constructed. In this example, genomics lets us translate the previously unreadable instruction book into English or whatever language you prefer. Fundamentally it allows us to read the DNA of organisms to understand the blueprint of life. We can now see the difference between the DNA of a human and a chimpanzee only differs by 4%. Humans and bananas are more than 60% identical on a DNA level. Lastly, the difference between me and you is only 0.1%. Now we can try answering how and why does this work.

Helping drive the technology needed to answer so many unknown questions are those developing the platforms to read DNA. Who are the companies helping drive innovation and development in this space? At the top is Illumina; they have been a powerhouse in space with an established footprint and technology. New companies in the space are looking to find a niche or outcompete Illumina. Different companies and their platforms will offer different pros and cons; overall, important factors to consider will be the price of the instrument, accuracy, read length, and cost per run. Albert Vilella has put together a fantastic Google sheet to help analyze this in more detail. Below is some more information on the companies expanding the genomics space.

Click an arrow to get more information on each company.

Illumina

Illumina entered into the DNA sequencing market with the acquisition of Solexa in 2007. Their technology is based on Sequencing by Synthesis.

Illumina’s portfolio includes both compact benchtop systems for rapid analysis of small numbers of samples, such as the iSeq Sequencing System that costs US$20,000, and the larger high-end NovaSeq 6000, which costs nearly $1 million but can churn out up to 6 trillion bases (6 terabases) of sequence — roughly 2,000 times the length of one of the human genome — every 2 days.

With roughly 90% of genomic data in 2022 being output on Illumina machines this is who and what all others entering the space will be compared to.

MGI Tech

Singular Genomics

Ultima Genomics

Element Biosciences

Pacific Biosciences (PacBio)

Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT)

As the genetic sequencer market becomes more competitive it should help fuel further innovation in the space to win over customers. Moving forward researchers will have a lot more choices on platforms and capabilities that best support their work. Additionally with the cost going down I think we will see more companies being able to use genomics as well, so we should see the continued expansion of the genomic market while companies help deliver new innovative platforms.

If you have made it this far thanks for reading and I hope this summary helped pass on some knowledge, here are some links to go to for further reading.

1. Amazing Nature paper by Michael Eisenstein that discusses the genomics market in more detail

2. Want to learn more on the basics of genomics, check of this video by Cleva Labs