09 03 w 37.4787 n 122.1507 w 37.4787 ; 122.1507 headquarters pacific biosciences of california inc. type public company traded as nasdaq pacb industry biotechnology founded 2004 2004 headquarters menlo park ca united states key people michael hunkapiller chairman ceo and president website www.pacificbiosciences.com pacific biosciences of california inc. is a biotechnology company founded in 2004 that develops and manufactures systems for gene sequencing and some novel real time biological observation . 1 2 they describe their platform as single molecule real time sequencing smrt based on the properties of zero mode waveguides . their first commercial product the pacbio rs was sold to a limited set of customers in 2010 and was commercially released in early 2011 . 3 4 a new version of the sequencer called the pacbio rs ii was released in april 2013 . 5 6 on 25 september 2013 a partnership between pacific biosciences and roche diagnostics was announced for the development of in vitro diagnostic products using the technology with roche providing us 75 000 000 in the deal . 7 8 in 2015 the company launched a new sequencing instrument called the sequel system with approximately 7 fold greater capacity than the pacbio rs ii . 9 10 contents 1 history 2 recognitions 3 going public 4 products 4.1 sequencing instruments 4.2 reagents 4.2.1 p6 c4 chemistry 4.2.2 p5 c3 chemistry 4.2.3 p4 c2 chemistry 5 key publications 6 references 7 external links history edit the company was founded based on research done at cornell university that combined semiconductor processing and photonics with biotechnology research . 1 it was initially founded under the name nanofluidics inc. the company raised nearly us 400 000 000 in six rounds of primarily venture capital financing making it one of the most capitalized startups in 2010 leading up to their public offering in october of that year . 11 key investors included mohr davidow ventures kleiner perkins caufield & byers alloy ventures and wellcome trust . 1 recognitions edit the company received the technology pioneer award from the world economic forum in 2009 . 1 12 in 2010 the scientist named the company and their first product the top life science innovation of the year 13 and the company received the 2010 advanced sequencing technology award from the national human genome research institute . 14 technology review magazine included them in their list of the top 50 most innovative companies for both 2010 and 2011 . 15 founder and chief technical officer dr. stephen turner was awarded the 2010 ewing marion kauffman foundation outstanding postdoctoral entrepreneur award for his work at the company . 16 going public edit pacific biosciences first offered stock on nasdaq under the symbol pacb . they sold 12 500 000 shares at an initial price of 16 per share and raised approximately 200 million in an initial public offering of stock on october 27 2010 . 17 products edit sequencing instruments edit the company s first scientific instrument called the pacbio rs was released to a limited set of eleven customers in late 2010 . 18 sequencing provider gatc biotech was selected by pacific biosciences as its first european service provider in late 2010 . 19 the product was then commercially released in early 2011 . 4 a new version of the sequencer called the pacbio rs ii was released in april 2013 ; it produces longer sequence reads and offers higher throughput than the original instrument . 5 6 in september 2015 the company announced the launch of a new sequencing instrument the sequel system . the sequencer has increased capacity with 1 million zero mode waveguides compared to 150 000 in the pacbio rs ii and is approximately one third the size and one half the price of the pacbio rs ii . 20 21 pacific biosciences said it would ship about 10 of the new instruments in the final quarter of 2015 . 22 a pacbio rsii sequencer to use the instrument customers must also purchase reagent packs for dna preparation and sequencing and small plastic cells called smrt cells . each cell is slightly less than one centimeter square and contains thousands of zero mode waveguides . the cells are sold in packs of eight . their secondary analysis bioinformatics product called smrt analysis is open source . 23 in 2013 the company released new bioinformatics tools for automated genome assembly hgap and finishing to 99.999 % accuracy quiver . 24 25 26 in may 2010 they published an article in nature methods showing that their instrument can detect methylation of dna strands without altering the dna . 27 in 2012 scientists used smrt sequencing to generate full bacterial methylomes . 28 reagents edit p6 c4 chemistry edit on oct 15 2014 pacbio announced the release of new chemistry p6 c4 which represents the company s 6th generation of polymerase and 4th generation chemistry further extends the average read length to 10 000 15 000 bases with the longest reads exceeding 40 000 bases . the throughput with the new chemistry is expected to be between 500 million to 1 billion bases per smrt cell depending on the sample being sequenced . 29 p5 c3 chemistry edit on oct 3 2013 pacbio released new reagent combination for pacbio rs ii the p5 dna polymerase with c3 chemistry p5 c3 . together they extend sequencing read lengths to an average of approximately 8.5 kb with the longest reads exceeding 30 000 bases . 30 throughput per smrt cell is around 500 million bp based on sequencing results from chm1 cell line . 31 p4 c2 chemistry edit on aug 21 2013 pacbio released new dna polymerase binding kit p4 . this p4 enzyme has average read lengths of 4 300 bp when paired with the c2 sequencing chemistry and 5 000 bp when paired with the xl chemistry . the enzyme s accuracy is similar to c2 reaching qv50 between 30x and 40x coverage . the resulting p4 attributes will provide you with higher quality assemblies using fewer smrt cells and with improved variant calling . this kit is compatible with both pacbio rs and pacbio rs ii instrument . 32 key publications edit before the first commercial release of their sequencer scientists published in january 2009 the first sequence data generated from a single molecule real time sequencing in the journal science . 33 then in april 2010 scientists published a paper in nature showing that they had used zero mode waveguides to perform real time observation of ribosomal translation . 34 demonstrating the value for bacterial sequencing scientists from pacific biosciences and other institutions published in january 2011 a paper in the new england journal of medicine demonstrating the origin of the 2010 cholera outbreak in haiti . 35 in august 2011 pacific biosciences scientists and collaborators at other organizations published a paper in the new england journal of medicine describing the classification of the e. coli strain causing the virulent 2011 outbreak in germany responsible for hundreds of cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome . 36 this paper showed that the strain of e. coli responsible for the outbreak had acquired a shiga toxin encoding phage through lateral gene transfer . in july 2012 several papers were published in peer review journals demonstrating methods to automate genome finishing for bacteria using single molecule real time sequencing . 37 38 39 in 2013 scientists estimated that the majority of bacterial and archaeal genomes could be fully sequenced and assembled to closure using pacbio long reads . 40 several papers published by researchers at pacific biosciences demonstrated that the sequencing instrument can be used to collect data on methylation dna damage and other epigenetic information . 41 42 43 the polymerase that performs the sequencing reaction in the zero mode waveguides produces kinetic data that can be used to distinguish base modifications . 44 in october 2012 scientists used smrt sequencing to generate the methylomes of six bacteria reporting their results in a paper in nucleic acids research . 28 with increasing read length and throughput mammalian studies increased using the product . in april 2012 scientists from pacific biosciences the university of california and other institutes used smrt sequencing to prove the validity of activating internal tandem duplication mutations in flt3 as a therapeutic target in acute myeloid leukemia . 45 their findings were published in the journal nature . 46 in august 2012 scientists at the broad institute published a paper reporting the findings of their evaluation of the pacific biosciences sequencer for snp calling and discovery . 47 scientists reported in genome research in october 2012 the use of the pacbio platform to sequence the full repeat expansion in the fmr1 gene responsible for fragile x syndrome . 48 a paper published in december 2012 offered the first demonstration of how to generate sequence data with the pacbio sequencer with no library preparation . 49 in 2013 scientists published papers demonstrating the use of pacbio sequencing to analyze transcriptomes showing that long reads were able to fully capture complete isoforms . 50 51 references edit a b c d businessweek dec 3 2009 wef announces 2010 tech pioneers nature methods apr 15 2010 single molecule analysis a ribosome in action genomeweb dec 7 2010 pacbio reveals beta system specs for rs ; says commercial release is on track for first half of 2011 a b genomeweb may 3 2011 pacbio ships first two commercial systems ; order backlog grows to 44 a b next gen seq apr 11 2013 pacbio launches pacbio rs ii sequencer a b genomeweb apr 16 2013 new products pacbio s rs ii ; cufflinks pacific biosciences to partner with roche on in vitro diagnostics products archived september 25 2013 at the wayback machine . the motley fool sep 25 2013 pacific biosciences rockets on roche diagnostics deal https www.genomeweb.com business news pacbio launches higher throughput lower cost single molecule sequencing system http www.bio itworld.com 2015 9 30 pacbio announces sequel sequencing system.aspx wall street journal mar 9 2010 sizing up promising young firms san francisco chronicle dec 4 2009 world economic forum honors bay area techies the scientist 1 dec 2010 top ten innovations 2010 reuters apr 5 2010 factbox companies riding the genome wave technology review 2010 2011 company profile pacific biosciences ewing marion kauffman foundation mar 12 2010 two postdoctural entrepreneurs are recognized for excellence archived june 21 2010 at the wayback machine . renaissance capital oct 30 2010 pacific biosciences of california pacb genome web feb 23 2010 pacbio names first 10 customers for 695 000 single molecule sequencer ; first shipments slated for q2 genomeweb sep 21 2010 gatc biotech to be first european service provider for pacbio rs http www.bio itworld.com 2015 9 30 pacbio announces sequel sequencing system.aspx http www.pacb.com blog introducing the sequel system the scalable platform for smrt sequencing https www.genomeweb.com business news pacbio launches higher throughput lower cost single molecule sequencing system pacific biosciences feb 23 2015 analysis self published source genomeweb jan 29 2013 new products pacbio s smrt analysis 1.4 genetic engineering & biotechnology news may 6 2013 finishing genomes with hgap nature methods may 5 2013 nonhybrid finished microbial genome assemblies from long read smrt sequencing data genomeweb may 10 2010 pacific biosciences team demonstrates method for directly detecting methylation during smrt sequencing a b nucleic acids research oct 2 2012 the methylomes of six bacteria http investor.pacificbiosciences.com releasedetail.cfm releaseid 876252 http blog.pacificbiosciences.com 2013 10 new chemistry for pacbio rs ii provides.html http www.nature.com nature journal v517 n7536 abs nature13907.html http blog.pacificbiosciences.com 2013 08 new dna polymerase p4 delivers higher.html science nov 20 2008 real time dna sequencing from single polymerase molecules nature apr 15 2010 real time trna transit on single translating ribosomes at codon resolution new england journal of medicine jan 6 2011 the origin of the haitian cholera outbreak strain new england journal of medicine aug 25 2011 origins of the e. coli strain causing an