shipped a few? you mean a few hundred...

It's now like Illumina didn't have problems with their GAIIX and HiSeq. Our first GAIIX didn't work for 6 months and then they replaced it with a new instrument.

They shipped a few and cannot support them. Kit shortages, lack of trained FAS and FSE staff. They oversold their abilities and with users having so much trouble, they need to hide in the background and whimper until they improve it enough to be a viable instrument or move the team back to Starlight/SOLiD or give up the sequencing market and focus on something else in the Life Tech Portfolio.

Well I always liked the PC guy better than the Mac guy, who seemed a snooty little sheet.

Interesting that those YouTube films with the MiSeq vs PGM guy have stopped. Could it possibly be that now actual ion data is out there in the wild, people can see just how poor it is, and even the hubris displayed by Mr Rothberg and Life cannot justify any further You Tube fun? Or maybe they got feedback that people quite liked the Miseq guy?

By major workforce reduction, I here a wave is coming in the next few days.

mkt cap of Life decrease with an almost $700M purchase of another company with little sales? How will it work if IT doesn't make milestones?

ILMN is a well run company so the mkt cap relfect that. No surprise here.

Market cap of ILMN just about to surpass that of LIFE according to Google Finance. Had not expected this tipping point to be reached until Q4 2011.

Kudos to GL and KM and the rest.

GL dumped KM awhile back. The Chief Scientific Officer also left to head up the ATCC.

If my reading is correct, the following analysis of data on new E. coli outbreak strain generated from Ion Torrent runs do indicate a sequencing issue with homopolymers despite a lack of disclosure about Ion Torrent real data quality.

http://bacpathgenomics.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/ehec-genomes/

With the same chemistry, MiSeq may more likely have similar performance as HiSeq. Can not wait to try MiSeq.

I am anxious to see how the MiSeq pans out. I would definitely favor it if I get the same data quality as the HiSeq but an overnight run time.

Ditto. Lots of people waiting on the sidelines right now. I'm not seeing these latest Ion Torrent results being even equivalent to a 454 Junior.

Why do you keep reposting this? No one cares about LIFE Technologies.

7 runs, almost $10K. It may be fast, but you pay for it both in price and data quality.

I am anxious to see how the MiSeq pans out. I would definitely favor it if I get the same data quality as the HiSeq but an overnight run time.

Terrible data quality, terrible assembly.

For the LIFE data, it's hard to judge the quality, since they haven't released it. Only an "assembly" where they bootstrapped the process by aligning it to existing E. coli genomic sequence(s) and then doing de novo assembly of anything that didn't fit. That still resulted in more than 350 contigs. The Chinese data (done on Ion Torrent) isn't great. 7 runs to get 12 x coverage, de novo assembly into > 3000 contigs.

Three days with library/bead prep. Three hours from prepared instrument start to finish. Terrible data quality, terrible assembly.

I really admire all these really smart people at LIFE Technologies. From the dumbest to the smartest. They are all brilliant. Even the dumbest CEO. To the smartest dishwarsher...

No, it is human shit. I think it is human shit.

LIFE has aan opportunity to make a real difference this time. Kudos to GL and KM and the rest. Here's a chance for them to shine.

"Life Technologies Corporation today announced that whole genome data from DNA sequencing samples from all 1,605 people that have that E. coli strain on the Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM™) proves that the bacterium that caused deadly outbreak in Germany is a new hybrid of pathogenic E. coli strains. Using 25 of the revolutionary instruments, all 1,605 genomes were sequenced in only three days."

Bullshit.

Life Technologies Corporation today announced that whole genome data from DNA sequencing samples from all 1,605 people that have that E. coli strain on the Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM™) proves that the bacterium that caused deadly outbreak in Germany is a new hybrid of pathogenic E. coli strains. Using 25 of the revolutionary instruments, all 1,605 genomes were sequenced in only three days.

"scientists completed a whole genome sequencing run"

They did not sequence a genome, they "completed a whole genome sequencing run". There is a difference, and LIFE uses very precise language in their press releases. They put a whole genome on the machine and completed the run. They found some genes that indicated a hybrid E. coli species.

the (original) press release said three days...

The press release is very clear:

When a deadly strain of never-before-seen E. coli broke out in Germany, speed to results became the top priority. With the Ion PGM™ sequencer, scientists completed a whole genome sequencing run and gained life-saving insights when they needed them the most—and they did it in just 2 hours.

It worked for them—imagine what the Ion PGM™ could do for your research

You just don't know how to read a LIFE press release. It just said they did genomic sequencing and found some genes, not that they actually sequenced a genome...

It took at least 5 touches, as they needed 5 whole runs to get enough data just to sequence 1 e coli bug. But of course they will have 1 Gb per run with high quality 200 base reads and 1 hour sample prep by year end so there is no need to worry about the performance of your PGM......

They did the same thing during the h1n1 outbreak.

it was single molecule and one of the IT chips sequenced every strain at once. for $5. no need for sample prep, it is a one touch of the magic wand to get the sample on the instrument.

Now Life is exploiting the e. coli outbreak, claiming IT systems ( in China and Germany) sequnced the strain in three hours. Does that include sample prep? Sleazy...

Who has a SOLiD 5500 series? How many sold have actually been delivered? How many orders were never made due to having no product? SOLiD is dead. Arrogance wouldn't have saved it.

All the old arrogant ABI people are at Illumina and PacBio. The shift in arrogance is quite clear.

I am hearing some serious slashing at LIFE as the numbers have no where to go for this quarter, everything frozen solid (ah!)

I spend a very long time on hold today with life technolgies customer service until I realized they are doing what ABI use to be.

Why do you keep posting this? Isn't that guy long gone. Your persistence in voicing this accusation has been taken as an indictment of the current CEO Mr. Taterhead. That isn't fair is it?

It's worst than that, all the ABI arrogance has been adopted by cheap IVGN sales rep who left their brains behind, so you now have the worst of it. Arrogance beyond intelligence... The other reps simply went to Illumina...

As I recall, customers used to say ABI stood for "Arrogance Beyond Imagination". Is this one of the cultural attributes that survived the acquisition?

"Molecular biologist are, generally speaking, pretty dumb and stupid (and certainly cheap). So they buy IT."
This arrogant Illumina attitude is one reason these 'stupid' biologists are buying PGM's.

I am sorry to inform you that this IS and HAS BEEN Life Tech's attitude from the very first days at AB. You want to know how many customers I have shown over the years where the power button is ? Or how often I have asked 'have you read the manual'. Nobody reads anything anymore, everyone is switching to shit cheap products and then ask for troubleshooting... can't even unwrap manuals... Cheap and Dumb, your average so called High Tech employee in 2011.

I don't care if a company is arrogant. I just want a product that works. So far Illumina has the best product out there and as any growing technology, it has hiccups but the majority of the time it does what it should.

I would not go buy something useless like an IT PGM because it does not do anything I need and I hate emulsion PCR. Even automated it is problematic. One touch is not that much of a game changer. Those are the most arrogant group anyway, they produce hot air and put out cocky youtube advertisements. If they had data to back up their attitude, that would be different.

"Molecular biologist are, generally speaking, pretty dumb and stupid (and certainly cheap). So they buy IT."

This arrogant Illumina attitude is one reason these 'stupid' biologists are buying PGM's.

Miseq will crush IT. 100x2 RL from day one and walk away operation. IT is still stuck with emulsion, and by the time they get OneTouch working it will be too late.

Molecular biologist are, generally speaking, pretty dumb and stupid (and certainly cheap). So they buy IT.

Great coverage of another quality Life product. Their handling of this clearly shows the world their company culture.

So when you buy an Ion Torrent, you sign a non-disclosure form agreeing to not publish your data? How can LIFE possibly threaten customers with legal action for revealing how poorly their machines are performing?

I love open array. Here come my big nature and science papers that relied heavily on open array data. Be cool like me and run out and buy them.

Great coverage of another quality Life product. Their handling of this clearly shows the world their company culture.

http://www.genomeweb.com/blog/bit-surprise

Paying a Painful 75% Secrecy Tax
http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2011/05/paying-painful-75-secrecy-tax.html

"Libraries with a mean sze >~220 bp yield results of reduced sequencing quality" (and that size is after adding adapters). Given that this is such a crucial point in amplicon design, why isn't it in the Application Note. I can make two guesses. One is a pure failure to think through what a customer might want to find in the note, as opposed to what marketing would like them to see. The other is worse: that the information was left out because it would need to change with each advance in the Ion chemistry.

Life show is a freaking joke. Spending money on that production instead of reinvesting it wisely into the company. Way to run the company into the ground.

Lucifer and his cronies don't give a damn about their employees. They'll cut benefits and jobs so the bottom line looks good just so they get big bonuses. They have middle managers that work the employees to death and are not hesitant to layoff the same individual the very next day. Thanks for your loyalty, take as much time off as you want and don't come back!

OA is pure donkey shit and everyone at Life Tech knows that. It actually exemplifies everything wrong in the company because every body working on it are lying to each other and themselves.

Yet another technology that LIFE has over sold. Sure, functioning properly, OA has a niche market where it has advantages over RT PCR, but, given the reaction volumes, it requires a pre-amplification step to achieve RT PCR levels of sensitivity.

I love how people keep asking for OA information... there isn't any! Hardly any papers and some papers with what I consider doctored data based on my OA usage. That thing is a pain plus I have to rely on ABI to get the damn arrays made. The hands on time is way way way under-estimated and the data quality is so poor. It requires artistic talent. The way our rep and the I think Product Manager(Boston)talked about it, it was all so easy to handle, now I see the scam. I hear tons of people have them, no one use them... zero usage... We paid 20K for that monster but now we need the space, BASTA ! I'm ashamed at buying into the BS.

"Of course Life is still extremely profitable and is doing quite well. The only indication that anything is "wrong" is on this site where a few idiots constantly post up rumors and BS.

In the real world - Life is doing great. Here...not so much.

Good thing we live in the real world."

Agree. The quote above exemplifies the BS.