Benchtop Sequencing System

Tender description

The Environmental Sequencing Facility requires a next-generation sequencing system that serves as a direct, enhanced replacement for its current benchtop short-read platform, which is being discontinued by the manufacturer. This new instrument must maintain compatibility with established short-read, paired end sequencing-by-synthesis chemistries and data analysis pipelines, while delivering significantly increased throughput and faster turnaround times. Critical features must include robust performance for applications such as amplicon and whole-genome sequencing, and the ability for the instrument to produce up to 15 Gigabases (Gb) of sequencing data when based around 2 X 300 base pair (bp) sequencing chemistry, and a capability to generate up to 50 million reads per sequencing run. To ensure sequencing quality is maintained with this replacement, the platform must retain an average per-base quality score of over 80% higher than Q30 (phred quality score) across the entire sequencing run. This procurement was facilitated via the LAB2010 NE Framework Lot 1 framework direct award call-off