GATC buys second Illumina Genome Analyzer II Paired-End
Annual capacity now at 450 Gigabases

Constance, Germany, 21. April 2008 - GATC Biotech, the leading sequencing service provider in Europe, today announced the purchase of an additional Illumina Genome Analyzer II Paired-End shortly after having acquired a second GS FLX from Roche Diagnostics. The total annual sequencing capacity is now at 450 gigabases.

The decision for the investment was based on increasing demand for projects for which

up to 50 bp read length is sufficient, such as resequencing of genomes, micro RNA, CAGE/SAGE and ChIP-sequencing.

“The demand for sequencing projects which require a hybrid strategy is increasing, too,” explains Dr. Kerstin Stangier, Global Key Account Manager of GATC. “The combination of the GS FLX with the Genome Analyzer allows us to overcome the drawbacks of each system, for example the known homopolymer problem of the pyrosequencing technology. With the new assembly strategy developed by GATC we combine the data of both systems and receive assemblies of higher and more reliable quality.”

Besides adding to the number of next-gen sequencers the company has also expanded its informatics infrastructure with new high-performance clusters and storage networks as well as bioinformaticians and programmers to cope with the increased data output and analysis.

Contact:

GATC Biotech AG
Elke Decker

Senior Director Marketing
Jakob-Stadler-Platz 7
D-78467 Konstanz
Tel: +49-7531-8160-30
Fax: +49-7531-8160-81
e.decker@gatc-biotech.com