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PacBio SPRQ-Nx Chemistry Now Shipping Worldwide, Enabling Sub-$300 HiFi Genomes for Large Scale Projects and AI-Enhanced Sequencing
PacBio SPRQ-Nx Chemistry Now Shipping Worldwide, Enabling Sub-$300 HiFi Genomes for Large Scale Projects and AI-Enhanced Sequencing
About this update from Pacific Biosciences Of California, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"New Revio multi-use SMRT Cells reduce sequencing costs by 30% compared to previous SPRQ chemistry while DeepConsensus improvements and expanded methylation calling increase accuracy, yield, and epigenetic insight\nMENLO PARK, Calif., May 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PacBio (NASDAQ: PACB), developer of the world’s most advanced sequencing technologies, today announced that SPRQ-Nx sequencing chemistry and new multi-use SMRT Cells for its Revio HiFi sequencing platform are now shipping worldwide. The commercial availability of SPRQ-Nx brings the per genome list price to $345, and the possibility of sub-$300 HiFi genomes to Revio customers sequencing at scale1, while expanded methylation detection and advances to DeepConsensus, an AI powered consensus algorithm developed in collaboration with Google, further improve accuracy, run performance, and the biological information generated from each read. PacBio has continued expanding the use of AI across the HiFi sequencing workflow in ways that directly improve data quality, speed, and biological interpretation. The latest DeepConsensus updates include optimizations enabled by Google’s AlphaEvolve coding agent, delivering measurable gains in accuracy and processing speed. PacBio is also advancing deep learning models for epigenetic detection, including updated 5mC and 6mA models optimized for SPRQ-Nx chemistry and a new 5-hydroxymethyl-cytosine, or 5hmC, caller. These advances are designed to help researchers generate richer HiFi datasets from the same sequencing run, including methylation signals relevant to cancer, tissue sequencing, and large-scale genomic research. When paired with SPRQ-Nx chemistry, these improvements translate directly to lower costs and higher performance in production environments. SPRQ-Nx allows the SMRT Cell consumable to be used multiple times, reducing sequencing costs to less than $300 per human genome at scale. In beta testing across 20 sites in Europe, Asia, and the United States, spanning over 1,400 runs, SPRQ-Nx delivered increased yield and a lower failure rate across a broad range of sample types, resulting in more usable data and greater consistency for high-throughput workflows relative to SPRQ chemistry. “In our beta testing, we saw consistently strong run performance,” said Adam Ameur, Associate Professor and Senior Bioinformatician at Uppsala Un...