.gen Technologies Inc.

Xconomy’s Luke Timmerman interviews Illumina CEO Jay Flatley on innovation, competition and staying on top. Particularly insightful are his views on the competitive landscape for next-gen sequencing, bioinformatics and why there aren’t any billion-dollar bioinformatics companies (yet) and the coming data management challenge in sequence data. http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2010/04/06/illumina-ceo-jay-flatley-on-how-to-keep-an-edge-in-the-fast-paced-world-of-gene-sequencing/?single_page=true

In an exciting application of whole genome sequencing technologies, Richard Gibbs and James Lupski from Baylor used Life Tech’s SOLiD system to find the mutation implicated in Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (CMT), a neurological disorder that currently affects 1 in 2,500 individuals in the United States. This acts as a proof of concept for whole genome sequencing [...]

Boston-area GenomeQuest makes a bid to move genome search and analysis tools into the cloud, in competition with Seattle-based Geospiza, which is running on the Amazon cloud computing platform. Geospiza and Life Tech have already announced a partnership in this space, so there’s a good chance we’ll see competition heating up just as we did [...]

Hot off the presses, Life Tech announced a single molecule sequencing technology using nanocrystals this morning at AGBT. Here’s the technology description in this morning’s press release: The new technology uses Qdot(R) nanocrystals as its core sequencing engine. Qdots are nanometer-sized semiconductor crystals that have made them ideal for groundbreaking cellular imaging research and for the detection of individual [...]

The San Diego Business Journal summarizes local biotech giants Illumina and Life Technologies’ race to the $1000 genome. Spoiler alert – analysts favor Illumina’s Solexa technology over Life Tech’s SOLiD.   http://www.sdbj.com/article.asp?aID=144667&link=perm

Interesting. Huntsville, Alabama-based Diatherix announces a PCR-based H1N1 assay. I know local favorite Life Technologies (formerly Invitrogen)’s PCR products have also been tapped by the CDC – competitors? http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=54010579

Local hero Life Technologies’ PCR system is tapped to help with the Swine Flu effort – go team! http://www.sdbj.com/enews_article.asp?aID=206391202.991218.1776502.51943.3424478.793