Pacific Biosciences
1505 Adams Drive
Menlo Park
California
94025
U.S.A.
Phone:
650-521-8000
Fax:
n/a
|
Pacific Biosciences (PacBio), headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, is a startup biotechnology company developing a transformative Single Molecule Real Time (SMRT™) DNA sequencing platform. PacBio's goal is to commercialize SMRT DNA sequencing technology, eventually enabling sequencing of individual genomes as part of routine medical care. The company is currently venture funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Alloy Ventures, Maverick Capital, and others.
Enabling routine use of DNA sequencing requires a significant increase in price performance and overall capabilities. The current industry-standard, Sanger sequencing, is expensive and slow for routine medical use. It was used for the Human Genome Project which took approximately 13 years and $3 billion to complete. Recently developed Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) platforms have increased throughput and lowered cost but have done so at the expense of other aspects of performance. They provide data in the form of short blocks of sequence, or short reads. Due to the highly repetitive nature of complex genomes, these short reads cannot be placed unambiguously on a known sequence template, nor do they generate sufficient overlap for reconstruction if the sequence is novel. Long reads are required to accomplish this successfully and efficiently.
PacBio's SMRT technology offers a completely new performance envelope - long reads, increased throughput, and low cost. Long reads are a critical advantage for a broad range of genomic analysis applications. For resequencing, long reads enable confident genomic placement of repetitive regions and characterization of structural variation. For de novo sequencing, long reads greatly simplify the reconstruction process and can achieve more complete sequence with less coverage. Requiring less coverage translates to much higher performance because fewer reads are needed.
This combination of performance characteristics is the result of a unique approach that uses a single DNA polymerase working in a continuous, processive manner to synthesize DNA. For the first time, natural DNA synthesis by a DNA polymerase can be observed as it occurs.
Email:
Ownership:
Web Site:
Pacific Biosciences
Employees:
Symbol:
|