Reduced PhiX

I recently commented on a post on the 'Next-Gen Seq' blog. The post mentioned the need to use a ~50% spike-in of PhiX DNA to run the MiSeq. Some others started talking about the fact that the software has now been upgraded so that it is not necessary to use such a large spike-in (~1-5% is now recommended). Here is my comment:

"We just did a MiSeq 2x150 amplicon run with the new software and an extremely small PhiX spike-in and it has effectively doubled our yield! It's great to see the technology continually improving; we're now getting almost 10 times as many reads from each 2x150 MiSeq run as we did just a few months back."

As it stands right now, Illumina seems to be doing a really good job of continually improving their technology and staying ahead of the competition on most fronts. We'll see how it goes as the dominant sequencing platforms continue to duke it out in the coming years!

- Brendan