454 Bio recently launched an open source DNA sequencing platform. (Blog Post)
I am so tired of anticompetitive sequencing companies that slow down scientific progress.
I don’t know if we need an open source sequencer.
Reverse engineering flowcell production & sequencing reagents for the nextseq500 series of instruments seems extremely achievable & would generate data at sufficient scale to do interesting work in immunology. I know there is at least one company in russia that has successfully done this for the MiSeq platform, which they have made cheaper per Gb that top-of-the-line illumina sequencers already