The Irys System, launched in late 2012, is BioNano Genomics’ (formerly BioNanomatrix) first commercially released instrument. While it isn’t really a next-gen sequencer, it is often included in this space as its applications overlap with those of other next-gen sequencers: sequence assembly and structural variation analysis.

The Irys System’s ($295k) main claim to fame is its ability to analyze very long (at least up to 1Mb), unamplified stretches of DNA at a rate of several Gb per hour. It does this by linearizing DNA molecules through massively parallel nanochannels. However, rather the sequencing individual bases, the multi-color imaging instrument detects sites that have been fluorescently labeled via a site-specific nicking endocuclease/polymerase repair reaction. These labeled sites, which tend to be several kb apart, generate positional information across the entire length of the DNA molecule. This macro-level analysis could be used on its own (e.g, structural variation analysis) or in conjunction with NGS data (e.g., sequence assembly).