Wed, 01/15/2014
Customer and AccuraScience LB talk about a NGS project involving a viral species, triggering a discussion about how the cost of a NGS-based study involving a viral or bacterial species is split among different components of the study.
Wed, 01/15/2014 at 10:19 AM
AccuraScience LB: Generally speaking, for viral (and bacterial) projects that involve NGS, the sequencing cost would be a very small proportion of the cost of the whole project, and sample preparation, other steps of the experiment, and data analysis would be the major portions. This is in sharp contrast to, e.g., human NGS studies, where the sequencing step is costing most, and data analysis and other steps would be a small proportion. This is because most of the cost in sequencing is the reagent cost, and the amount of reagent consumed is proportional to the amount of sequencing data to be produced, whereas the cost for data analysis is primarily measured by the time spent by the bioinformatician to do the analysis (and a little computational time), which does not go substantially lower with the amount of data.
For your project, if a targeted sequencing strategy is to be applied (with proper enrichment strategy), the sequencing experiment itself would be essentially free, because the data amount required is so small that these samples can simply be added a lane used by another project (assuming Illumina's Hiseq sequencer is used). To ensure the amount of sequencing data meets the need, the sequencing facility may "overshoot" it a little, and allocate more than what you actually need (e.g., you might need 1 million reads, and they may decide to allocate 5 million to guarantee that you have at least 1 million), and this might cost you a few hundred dollars. The sample preparation (including barcoding) might cost you ~$300 a sample (you might be looking at 4-6 samples for your whole project), and the data analysis would cost you on the order of $2000 or maybe a little higher.
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Note: LB stands for Lead Bioinformatician. An AccuraScience LB is a senior bioinformatics expert and leader of an AccuraScience data analysis team.
Disclaimer: This text was selected and edited based on genuine communications that took place between a customer and AccuraScience data analysis team at specified dates and times. The editing was made to protect the customer’s privacy and for brevity. The edited text may or may not have been reviewed and approved by the customer. AccuraScience is solely responsible for the accuracy of the information reflected in this text.