This is a guest post contributed by Dr. Brad Chapman from the Harvard School of Public Health. Original post can be found here.

As a follow on to the release of our E. coli Ion Torrent data, over the coming weeks, we will be releasing both Whole Genome and Exome data of J. Craig Venter generated on the SOLiD4 platform.  We use this sample internally for platform and analysis validation/regression testing since it is so well characterized and validated.  The first data set to be released is the 50Mb Exome data using the Agilent's SureSelect Target Enrichment System.  Running a quarter slide produced 12 billion bases of paired end data.

I was recently interviewed by Scientific Computing World magazine regarding informatics in the rapidly developing field of Genomics  and Next Generation Sequencing (read full article here on pages 12-14). The article very clearly illustrates  some of the challenges in this field  and offers insight as to how people are attempting to address these challenges with software, IT infrastructure, and community education.  I would like to use the article to facilitate a discussion around a few key questions.

In light of the recent acquisition of Ion Torrent by Life Technologies I am reminded of the question I was asked at every turn; “Why did you choose SOLiD as your sequencing platform?” At the time we chose to partner with then Applied Biosystems, the instrument was known as the SOLiD2 and was deemed quite inferior to the Illumina GA in terms of technical ability.

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