BGI Americas and Gencove have entered into an agreement to offer a new low-pass sequencing service to lower barriers to large-scale genomics projects, such as carried out by the well-known national biobanks, and others. The service combines BGI’s DNBseq™ Next Generation Sequencing technology and Gencove’s ImputeSeq™ low-pass sequencing analysis pipeline.
BGI Americas is a subsidiary of Shenzhen, China, based BGI Genomics, the parent company founded in 1999. BGI Americas provides a full menu of next generation sequencing and clinical testing services for academic research, drug development and diagnostics in the North and South American continents.
The company operates service laboratories under global quality standards from laboratories in the US, Hong Kong and mainland China. BGI Genomics leverages its genomic research experience and massive sequencing capacity to provide customers with the highest quality data, fast turnaround at affordable prices.
Gencove is a spin-out of the New York Genome Center, founded in 2015, dedicated to making genomic data more accessible and interpretable through the development of molecular and computational tools.
Gencove’s flagship product is its low-pass genome sequencing platform; the company operates a laboratory in New York and offers both low-pass sequencing and analytics software as a service, with customers that include top academic institutions, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
BGI’s DNBseq technology has brought the price of generating sequencing data to a point where it is lower than that of genotyping arrays. At the same time, Gencove’s ImputeSeq™ pipeline turns low-pass data into high quality variant calls across the genome, along with ancestry and microbiome profiles for each sample.
The powerful new NGS-based solution will provide scientists with more data, better variant calls without bias, and the ability to discover new rare variants, at a cost that is lower than that of genotyping arrays. In addition, the raw genome data will remain available for future re-analysis as science progresses.
The solution will be available in the Americas as a complete turn-key service from both companies and will benefit scientists involved in genome-wide association studies, biobanks, and pharmacogenomics by allowing them to increase the power and scale of their work.
“This new service is the next step towards making NGS data more affordable through our DNBseq technology. Teaming up with Gencove allows us to provide a better tool for large genome-wide studies, allowing more precise analysis to advance the development of more precise healthcare.” – Charles Bao, General Manager of BGI Americas Corporation
“The DNBseq technology combined with Gencove’s analysis is a powerful tool for driving the adoption of sequencing to new applications and increasing the scale at which scientists can conduct research.” – Joe Pickrell, CEO and co-founder of Gencove
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