How long will it take to sequence my sample?

We endeavour to complete most standard sequencing projects within four weeks of QC confirmation of your sample. Of course, larger projects may take somewhat longer depending on the sequencing requirements. We will notify you of the expected date of completion of your project and we will keep you updated until your data has been delivered.

We work in conjunction with the Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium to provide a range of standard and bespoke analysis services. Please visit our bioinformatics services page or contact us for further information and to discuss your requirements.

The format in which your results will be returned will depend on your application and the level of bioinformatics support you have purchased. The most basic form data that we will return is an Illumina FastQ format file containing your list of reads and their associated quality values. You will also receive a run report which summarises the sample details, sequencer throughput, data quality and various other parameters associated with your sequencing run. We can also provide the raw data from which your bases were called (essentially equivalent to a Sanger chromatogram), however these data are very large, and will be provided on a removable hard disk drive. If you choose this option, we will provide the disk drive at extra cost.

The sample submission requirements vary between applications. Please examine our Sample Submission Guidelines, or contact us for further information.

Our complete price list is available on request. However, we recommend that you contact us to discuss your requirements.

The sequencer will output a certain number of reads (individual 'sequences'), and this will correspond to a proportional number of megabases of sequence. Any sized genome or sample can be sequenced; the smaller the sample, in terms of the number of bases, the greater the depth of coverage. If you have something relatively small, or you would like to carry out targetted sequencing on a pool of loci, then you may be interested in our multiplexing service. This allows you prepare a number of samples in one library, which are sequenced all at once as a single sample. Read more.

This depends on the type of repeat. Homopolymeric repeats do not pose a problem for Illumina sequencing (unlike Roche/454 sequencing, for instance), but larger repetitive elements may cause problems with the analysis of your data. Technically, they pose no problem for sequencing. However, because Illumina uses 'short read' technology, it can be difficult to assembly repeats longer than the read length, which is currently no longer than 70 bases.

Yes. Illumina technology can reliably sequence through homopolymeric regions.

It is certainly possible that PCR bias may be present in your sample after library preparation. The current Illumina sample preparation procedure uses PCR as an enrichment step before sequencing and it is known that this step does show some bias away from A+T rich regions. However, the PCR enrichment PCR is kept to a minimum number of cycles (currently 10) and we are currently investigating the use of PCR-free sample preparation procedures to eliminate this bias. However, even with 12 cycles of PCR enrichment, the observed bias is minor.

Currently we routinely perform 35 base sequencing as our 'standard' service. This is the length that most customers request. The Illumina sequencing platform is enabled for sequencing up to 70 bases. We can produce sequence longer than this, but there is a quality penalty as the read length increases.

We typically prepare 250 base insert libraries for our 'standard' paired end sequencing service. We prepare libraries of 1kb, 2kb or 4kb for our standard 'mate pair' sequencing service, although we can prepare up to 10kb insert libraries by special request (these incur additional cost).