SAN DIEGO (OBBeC) - Illumina has reported that scientists at the Company have completed sequencing the genomes of an anonymous African Trio (Yoruba from Ibadan, Nigeria) using the company's Genome Analyzer sequencing platform.

In February of this year, the Company reported the sequencing of the first of these HapMap samples, that of the adult male.

The Company initiated sequencing of the two additional samples in April and, as reported, has generated an average of 14 fold coverage of each genome within weeks.

Scientists were able to rapidly generate the data by incorporating system improvements in the Genome Analyzer that yielded single flowcell runs exceeding 7.5 billion bases (GB) of high-quality data, outlined the company.

In addition, with software improvements which will be commercially available this summer, Illumina scientists have demonstrated that the same runs can yield 10GB of high quality data with 50-base paired end reads.

In April, Illumina deposited the sequence data for the adult male into the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database, and the Company intends to deposit the sequence data for the female adult and the offspring into the NCBI database to enable researchers anywhere to access and analyze the data.

"The high-quality data generated from the sequencing of this West African Trio is important to enrich our knowledge of human genetic variation in individuals, to map out detailed inheritance patterns in single genomes, and ultimately to identify new mutational events as they arise," said Dr David Bentley, Vice President and Chief Scientist at Illumina.

The scientists were able to generate over 45GB of high-quality aligned data for each of the adult female and the offspring using recent advances in chemistry, software, and protocols for the Genome Analyzer. These advances include both short insert Paired End reads and long insert Mate Pair reads with both reads at 50 base pairs or longer to increase mapping accuracy; increased cluster density for significantly higher output; and improved algorithms to generate higher quality data.

The Company's Paired Read and Mate Pair library generation methods enabled reads in excess of 50 base pairs from each end of a read, with some runs generating reads of up to 75 base pairs from each end of a fragment.