February 28, 2022 08:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Element Biosciences Inc., developer of a new and disruptive DNA sequencing platform, today announced partnerships with both Google DeepVariant and Sentieon for variant calling analysis. Through the partnerships, the DeepVariant and Sentieon teams have evaluated Element data and generated Element-specific machine learning models. Element will continue to work with both teams to further improve quality and ease of use. Customers who purchase an Element instrument will be offered a 6-month Sentieon license to process Element data at no cost.

“We've observed high data quality with our existing methods, and further improvements with re-trained approaches. We've seen especially good performance at lower coverages, which suggests Element may have some read-level accuracy advantages.”

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The rapid expansion of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data and the use of these data in a wide range of new applications has created a need for improved computational tools for data processing.

Google DeepVariant, a deep learning technology, was specifically designed to reconstruct genome sequences from NGS sequencing data with significantly greater accuracy than previous classical methods. DeepVariant accomplishes this by transforming the task of NGS variant calling into an image classification problem well-suited to Google’s existing technology and expertise. DeepVariant is available under the BSD open source license.

Sentieon, a developer of highly accurate and optimized algorithms for bioinformatics applications, has created tools that are faster and cheaper alternatives to the industry standard for secondary analysis in NGS data processing. Sentieon technology provides high accuracy and ease of use, while dramatically improving processing speed.

“We are excited about the partnerships with both Sentieon and Google DeepVariant, and the high data quality our new AVITI System has demonstrated with both of their variant calling algorithms. This will only further enhance the user experience for all our respective customers,” said Molly He, Ph.D., CEO, and co-founder of Element.

“We are delighted to support Element Biosciences’ AVITI sequencing platform as it enters the NGS market,” said Jun Ye, CEO of Sentieon. “This partnership enables Element’s customers to benefit from each of our respective strengths in NGS data generation and data analysis. It has been a pleasure working with Element to improve variant calling. Their data has consistently high quality, leading to very accurate variant calling results. We look forward to serving their customers and continuing our collaborations.”

“We are excited to see a new sequencing technology,” said Andrew Carroll, Product Lead – Genomics at Google. “We've observed high data quality with our existing methods, and further improvements with re-trained approaches. We've seen especially good performance at lower coverages, which suggests Element may have some read-level accuracy advantages."

About Sentieon

Sentieon® develops award winning, extremely accurate and highly-optimized algorithms and software for bioinformatics data processing applications. Sentieon® is a team of professional engineers with deep expertise in algorithm, software, and system optimization acquired through experience developing image processing, computational lithography, large-scale data mining, and bioinformatics applications. Using our accumulated expertise in modeling, optimization, machine learning, and high-performance computing, we strive to enable precision data for precision medicine. For more information, visit www.sentieon.com.