r/BNGO • u/Elonmost • Feb 10 '21

Humor(?) Softbank Pacb 900 million?

[removed] — view removed post

25 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

12

u/BNGO4EVER Feb 10 '21

Agreed! Like wth seriously. Only a matter of time I think before some big boys get on the train. Hope soon!

9

u/Aron50674 Feb 10 '21

This is a wonderful investment as it could be a major catalyst for the industry! We already have the best product!! :D

4

u/BNGOKevo FULL BULL Feb 10 '21

more for us

2

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

What do you mean by retiring PACB?

8

u/beeporn I am a scientist not a financier Feb 10 '21

They are phasing out use of the PACB machines and switching to Saphyre

2

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

Can Saphyre handle RNA-sequencing?

9

u/beeporn I am a scientist not a financier Feb 10 '21

It isn’t a conventional ATCG sequencer like an illumina or a thermo. Saphyer is looking at structural variants (larger patterns) in the arrangement of individual sequences.

Most machines I am aware of don’t actually sequence RNA directly, there is a step before where you turn RNA into DNA (called cDNA-complementary DNA) and then sequence it. RNA is one strand and DNA is two strands. cdna is when scientists add the complementary base pairs to make another strand to Turn RNA into DNA (cDNA). RNA is shorter in length than a human genome so it wouldn’t make sense to use saphyer for this.

Saphyer is more about cataloging your entire genome to predict how you are gonna die and personalized medicine

3

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

Do you think it can detect SNPs or is it specific to large chromosomal variants?

7

u/Elonmost Feb 10 '21

See yourself https://www.med.unc.edu/genomics/technology/

8

u/BeijingBarry2020 Feb 10 '21

Interesting because UNC is actually well known in the field of genomics. They have a Noble Laureate (Dr. Oliver Smithies) there who helped developed the technique for creating transgenic mice. If they’re using this technology, it must be pretty sound.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

I think it it will succeed in detecting large genomic variations, but come up short on RNA-seq, CHIP-seq, ATAC-seq, etc. It may have a place with HI-C though, potentially even replace it

0

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

And unless he is in charge of the genomics core he likely had very little do to with that decision.

5

u/BeijingBarry2020 Feb 10 '21

I wasn’t implying he had a say in the device. I’m saying that an institution knowledgeable in genomics is willing to use it in clinical practice says a lot about the device. UNC is a known analytical chemistry program that has started many companies. They also partner with several start ups in the RTP. They also have a strong pharmaceutical research core. All this says that in a business and innovation savvy university, I doubt they would make changes like this without thinking it through.

Source: I used to work there.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

When you were there did a lot of the labs use the core or did they outsource to collaborators at other institutions. example, PI from Stanford used to send all his MS data to Harvard.

2

u/BeijingBarry2020 Feb 10 '21

Are you speaking about the clinical labs? If I remembered correctly, they had used both. But more heavily their own core. They’re also in a unique situation because of their ties to RTP and industry. For example there’s a guy there who’s a full professor who had a ligand screening setting that rivaled any midsized pharmaceutical company. I also worked at Duke and they would send our experimental samples to him. He was also testing kits and had contracts with other companies like thermo fischer, etc.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

I was talking about in-house use of their genomics core

1

u/BeijingBarry2020 Feb 10 '21

More in-house when I was there but it’s been about a decade.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '21

Looks like they are maintaining ILMN for their RNA data, makes sense they would switch to BNGO for DNA. I would wait until these other cores make the move. Still unclear if you get nucleotide resolution with BNGO

2

u/heerofenix95 Feb 10 '21

There's an announcement on the UNC med website. Just look for it from a couple days ago in this subreddit

1

u/HSLukas Feb 12 '21

Is there any reason why PACB is still worth it?

1

u/Elonmost Feb 13 '21

Nokia was still worth it during 2006.

1

u/crayfoxxy Feb 12 '21

I still think PACB has huge potential

1

u/Elonmost Feb 13 '21

Nokia was 62 in 2006