Illumina Completes Sequencing of African Trio

Illumina, Inc., (NASDAQ:ILMN) today announced that scientists at the Company have completed sequencing the genomes of an anonymous African Trio (Yoruba from Ibadan, Nigeria) using the company’s Genome Analyzer sequencing platform. Illumina previously announced the sequencing of the first of these HapMap samples, that of the adult male, in February 2008. The Company initiated sequencing of the two additional samples in April and generated an average of 14 fold coverage of each genome within weeks. Illumina scientists were able to rapidly generate the data by incorporating system improvements in the Genome Analyzer that yielded single flowcell runs exceeding 7.5 billion bases (GB) of high-quality data. In addition, with software improvements which will be commercially available this summer, Illumina scientists have demonstrated that the same runs can yield 10GB of high quality data with 50-base paired end reads. In April, Illumina deposited the sequence data for the adult male into the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database, and the Company intends to deposit the sequence data for the female adult and the offspring into the NCBI database to enable researchers anywhere to access and analyze the data. "The high-quality data generated from the sequencing of this West African Trio is important to enrich our knowledge of human genetic variation in individuals, to map out detailed inheritance patterns in single genomes, and ultimately to identify new mutational events as they arise,” said David Bentley, Ph.D, Vice President and Chief Scientist at Illumina. "The data for this trio will be freely available in the public domain to extend and complement ongoing human genetic studies, including the 1000 Genomes Project. As Illumina enables researchers worldwide to routinely generate high-quality individual human-genome sequences our understanding of human genetics and disease will rise to a new level in the coming year.” Illumina scientists generated over 45GB of high-quality aligned data for each of the adult female and the offspring using recent advances in chemistry, software, and protocols for the Genome Analyzer. These advances include both short insert Paired End reads and long insert Mate Pair reads with both reads at 50 base pairs or longer to increase mapping accuracy; increased cluster density for significantly higher output; and improved algorithms to generate higher quality data. Illumina’s unique Paired Read and Mate Pair library generation methods enabled reads in excess of 50 base pairs from each end of a read, with some runs generating reads of up to 75 base pairs from each end of a fragment. "The latest advances on the Genome Analyzer demonstrate the scalability of the system,” said Christian Henry, Acting General Manager of Illumina’s Sequencing Business. "We are now internally generating runs of nearly 15GB of data. Furthermore, we have active programs, which will further increase the read length, the throughput per day, and the quality of the data generated by the Genome Analyzer. We expect that the combination of these improvements will enable our customers to achieve this level of high-quality data on a single flowcell later this year. These improvements, which rely solely on chemistry and software developments, can be readily implemented on the existing Genome Analyzer platform. By continually working to optimize our system, we will enable our customers to extract more data from their systems and in the process drive the cost per genome sequenced down significantly.” The Illumina Genome Analyzer continues to experience rapid and broad adoption across a range of customers, including large genome centers, service and core facilities, individual academic labs, and pharmaceutical and industrial companies. Our customers in turn have completed experiments rapidly and economically and have published over 50 papers to date in leading peer reviewed journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Genetics, Genome Research, and Cell. For a complete list of published papers using Illumina’s Genome Analyzer, please visit www.illumina.com/pagesnrn.ilmn?ID=93. About Illumina Illumina (www.illumina.com) is a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of next-generation life-science tools and integrated systems for the large-scale analysis of genetic variation and biological function. Using our proprietary technologies, we provide a comprehensive line of products and services that currently serve the sequencing, genotyping, and gene expression markets, and we expect to enter the market for molecular diagnostics. Our customers include leading genomic research centers, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, clinical research organizations, and biotechnology companies. Our tools provide researchers around the world with the performance, throughput, cost effectiveness, and flexibility necessary to perform the billions of genetic tests needed to extract valuable medical information from advances in genomics and proteomics. We believe this information will enable researchers to correlate genetic variation and biological function, which will enhance drug discovery and clinical research, allow diseases to be detected earlier, and permit better choices of drugs for individual patients. "Safe Harbor” Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: this release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward-looking statements are Illumina’s ability (i) to integrate effectively our recent acquisition of Solexa, Inc., (ii) to develop and commercialize further our BeadArray™, VeraCode®, and Solexa® technologies and to deploy new sequencing, gene expression, and genotyping products and applications for our technology platforms, (iii) to manufacture robust microarrays and Oligator® oligonucleotides, (iv) to integrate and scale our VeraCode technology, together with other factors detailed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including our recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q or in information disclosed in public conference calls, the date and time of which are released beforehand. We disclaim any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements beyond the date of this release.