14 July 2020
In 2019, the volume of genomic data generated by Illumina’s global installed base of more than 15,000 sequencing systems increased more than 50 percent year-over-year, to 150 petabases. That is the equivalent of 500 years of continuous video recordings in high definition. This vast amount of data is a sequencing success story, highlighting the impact of lower sequencing costs, and the proliferation of sequencing-based research and clinical applications that can contribute to life-impacting outcomes.
Illumina’s commitment to delivering the most innovative and flexible sequencing technologies is well known. Perhaps less well understood, the company is equally committed to helping customers manage growing volumes of data output to reduce costs and time to genomic insight.
Following the acquisition of Edico in May 2018, and cloud-based software company BlueBee in June 2020, Illumina is pleased to welcome genomic compression software company Enancio, based in Cesson-Sévigné, France. Enancio’s loss-less compression technology reduces data storage costs by as much as five times by compressing the output from Illumina’s sequencers from 50GB to 10GB. Once on-board, Enancio’s technology will be directly integrated into DRAGEN, as well as our cloud storage platform services.
“Illumina continues to systematically address the data bottlenecks that are inherent with the deluge of data produced by users of our sequencing systems and as such we are pleased to welcome Enancio to the Illumina family,” said Susan Tousi, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Illumina. “Illumina now has one of the industry’s foremost and differentiated secondary analysis tools in DRAGEN, a scalable cloud data exchange with both the Illumina Analytics Platform (IAP) and BlueBee technology, and together this fosters a cost effective, fast and simple workflow for our customers. With Enancio and BlueBee on board, Illumina is now positioned with exceptional data cloud offerings.”
This information tsunami is both far-reaching and complex, yet within the data lies infinite possibilities for great scientific advancements, and together with DRAGEN we’re going to make storing and transferring data more efficient and user-friendly
Enancio’s pre-commercial, cloud-based compression technology reduces data storage costs, while preserving data integrity. Enancio’s compression is a loss-less, reference-based genomic data compressor. The DNA sequence is compressed using a reference-based method: reads are mapped on a reference genome using an ultra-fast mapping scheme specifically designed for compression. A compact binary format is used to encode reads as position and a list of differences, followed by an entropy coder. Quality scores are encoded in a loss-less way using a range encoder and context models adapted to the different types of quality schemes.
Enancio’s technology offers optimal levels of speed and efficiency for the compression and decompression of genomic data, and nicely complements Illumina’s other informatics solutions.
“I am honored to join Illumina, where together we will address the data tsunami that has thrust researchers and clinicians into the digital age,” said Jennifer Del Giudice, CEO of Enancio. “This information tsunami is both far-reaching and complex, yet within the data lies infinite possibilities for great scientific advancements, and together with DRAGEN we’re going to make storing and transferring data more efficient and user-friendly.”
Combined, Illumina’s recent genomic analysis-related acquisitions break down the barriers inherent in the data deluge. We are committed to improving the customer experience across the entire end-to-end genomic sequencing workflow, and robust and innovative informatics plays a key role. Illumina continues to drive the utilization of genomic data and accelerate the adoption of genomic data in clinical care.
