The company unveiled the instrument to attendees of the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting, a swanky event that has become the place to make a splash in sequencing. With venture funding of $266 million to date and a unique technology capable of reading single DNA molecules in real-time, Pacific Biosciences has been the most talked about sequencing start-up ever since it first emerged from stealth mode at the same conference in 2008. Indeed, Pacific Biosciences was named one of our TR50, top 50 most innovative companies.The company also announced that it has already sold ten units–with a price tag of $695,000 each–with a number of sequencing centers waiting in the wings. (Included in the first round of customers are: Baylor College of Medicine, the Broad Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, the Genome Center at Washington University, Monsanto, the National Cancer Institute/SAIC-Frederick, the National Center for Genome Resources, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and Stanford University.)
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