After shutting down all their NGS research programmes in April, Roche announced this week that they”re discontinuing the 454 sequencers. Although there are a lot of 454 sequencers in use all around the world and production/support will not completely stop until 2016, based on how fast SOLiD disappeared, 454 won”t be around very long. So, here are a few great articles, to commemorate a good, but commercially not viable sequencer
The Roche sequencers played (and still play) an important role in HIV research:
Low-Cost Ultra-Wide Genotyping Using Roche/454 Pyrosequencing for Surveillance of HIV Drug Resistance Dudley et al. 2012
Universal Amplification, Next-Generation Sequencing, and Assembly of HIV-1 Genomes Gall et al. 2012
Reconstructing the Dynamics of HIV Evolution within Hosts from Serial Deep Sequence Data Poon et al. 2012
… and cancer research:
A high-throughput next-generation sequencing-based method for detecting the mutational fingerprint of carcinogens Besaratinia et al. 2012
High Accuracy Mutation Detection in Leukemia on a Selected Panel of Cancer Genes Atak et al. 2012
Exome Sequencing Reveals Comprehensive Genomic Alterations across Eight Cancer Cell Lines Chang et al. 2011
Several complete and partial genomes were sequenced with 454:
Complete Khoisan and Bantu genomes from southern Africa Schuster et al. 2010
The Cassava Genome: Current Progress, Future Directions Prochnik et al. 2013
Complete mitochondrial genome of a Pleistocene jawbone unveils the origin of polar bear Lindqvist et al. 2012
Multi-Platform Next-Generation Sequencing of the Domestic Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo): Genome Assembly and Analysis Dalloul et al. 2010
What will happen next?
Roche recently signed an exclusive licensing deal with PacBio (known for their SMRT = “single molecule real time” sequencing system). As the SMRT system has very limited external validation at the moment (although, a few groups have already started publishing SMRT results), it”s hard to guess whether it will ever become popular or not (we”ve seen “revolutionary” sequencing technologies disappear without leaving a footprint before). I think the only thing we can do now is keep our eyes peeled and enjoy the ride.
