Illumina says it can deliver a $100 genome — soon

Next-gen sequencing pioneer Illumina says it may soon usher in the era of the $100 genome — which could, in theory, make consumer genomics orders of magnitude more accessible.

CEO Francis deSouza on Monday unveiled a new machine, called the NovaSeq, at this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. He said the machine’s scanning speed has increased to a pace that could unravel the DNA of an entire human genome in an hour.