A Breakthrough Workflow Automation System for Next Generation Sequencing – System Enables Four Hour Clonal Amplification With Less Than Ten Minutes of Hands-on Time

HONOLULU — At the 59th annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) announced the launch and immediate availability of cBot, a new standard for ease-of-use and sequencing workflow automation. cBot is a revolutionary plug-and-play, user installable system for clonal amplification of sequencing libraries. Its automated design eliminates user intervention and enables clonal amplification to be performed in four hours with less than ten minutes of hands-on time. cBot innovations include ready-to-use, pre-packaged reagents, simple touch-screen operation, and browser-based remote monitoring. High quality results are assured by smart sensors that monitor instrument performance, combined with new chemistry and protocols that deliver higher density clusters and improved sequencing accuracy.

Illumina’s proprietary cluster generation process offers major advantages over competing emulsion PCR-based methods in terms of simplicity and hands-on time. cBot now widens that gap by minimizing user touch points, improving chemistry for higher quality results, and decreasing hands-on time to less than ten minutes. “The ease of use of the Genome Analyzer workflow continues to be one of the key advantages of our system,” said Tristan Orpin, senior vice president of Commercial Operations at Illumina. “cBot further simplifies the workflow and makes sequencing operations even more efficient. To use cBot, customers simply insert the pre-configured reagent rack along with the flow cell and their samples, and press start. Through this and other innovations, such as accurate long reads of 2 x 100 base pairs delivering outputs in excess of 50 gigabases, Illumina is dramatically scaling the output and performance of NGS technology.”

About Illumina

Illumina (www.illumina.com) is the leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of next-generation life-science tools and integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. Using our proprietary technologies, we provide a comprehensive line of products and services that currently serve the sequencing, genotyping, and gene expression markets, and we expect to enter the market for molecular diagnostics. Our customers include leading genomic research centers, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, clinical research organizations, and biotechnology companies. Our tools provide researchers around the world with the performance, throughput, cost effectiveness, and flexibility necessary to perform the billions of genetic tests needed to extract valuable medical information from advances in genomics and proteomics. We believe this information will enable researchers to correlate genetic variation and biological function, which will enhance drug discovery and clinical research, allow diseases to be detected earlier, and permit better choices of drugs for individual patients.

“Safe Harbor” Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: this release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward-looking statements are Illumina’s ability (i) to develop and commercialize further our BeadArray™, VeraCode®, and Solexa® technologies and to deploy new sequencing, gene expression, and genotyping products and applications for our technology platforms, (ii) to manufacture robust instrumentation and reagents technology, together with other factors detailed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including our recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q or in information disclosed in public conference calls, the date and time of which are released beforehand. We disclaim any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements beyond the date of this release.