Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) today announced that the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), a flagship institution of Singapore and one of the top research centers in the world, has purchased four additional Genome Analyzers taking its installed base to six. Among researchers at GIS, the Genome Analyzer continues to be the preferred platform for conducting sequencing studies. The Genome Analyzers will be used in a variety of projects, including the construction of transcriptional networks linked to cancer and stem cells.

Dr. Ruan Yijun, Associate Director of Genome Technology at GIS said, “The Genome Analyzer is robust and versatile. We will use it across a broad array of applications including construction of transcriptional networks through identifying transcription factor interactions and chromatin modifications in stem cells and cancer cells, characterization of genome and transcriptome variations in healthy and patient samples, and discovery of new pathogens through metagenomic sequencing. This expansion of our sequencing capacity is necessary for us to deliver high impact discoveries through our innovative PET sequencing platform.”

PET, or the Pair-End-diTag technology, is a new approach developed by researchers at GIS to study genome structures and functions. In October 2007, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded GIS US$3M grants to further advance the PET technology for human genome annotation and to identify complete fusion genes that function as oncogenes, or cancer-causing genes.

“The PET sequencing strategy that we pioneered integrates seamlessly with Illumina’s Genome Analyzer. Using the system’s paired-end reads capacity, we have successfully established our ultra high throughput PET-based analyses for comprehensive characterization of transcriptome and chromatin structures,” said by Dr. Wei, Chia-Lin, the senior group leader of Genome Technology and Biology at GIS.

“With this scale up, GIS is strengthening its position as a powerhouse among genome centers worldwide. This second purchase of multiple systems is further evidence of the market’s rapid and broad adoption of the Genome Analyzer with repeat purchases across a wide range of customers, including genome centers and individual academic research labs,” said Tristan Orpin, Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations at Illumina.

Illumina’s sequencing technology is founded on large-scale parallel sequencing of millions of nucleic acid fragments using proprietary reversible terminator-based sequencing chemistry. This approach, with Illumina’s automated workflow and the Genome Analyzer, has been broadly adopted by both single-investigator laboratories and genome centers worldwide. As a result, researchers have leveraged the platform’s extensive range of applications, including whole-genome, targeted and de novo sequencing, analysis of bisulfite converted DNA, transcriptome profiling, and protein-nucleic acid interactions to publish groundbreaking studies at an unprecedented rate. Since its commercial release in early 2007, more than 120 original research studies have been published on the Genome Analyzer in peer-reviewed journals.