A first look at Illumina’s new NextSeq 500

[AllSeq]

AllSeq was recently at Illumina HQ to get a sneak peek at their new NextSeq 500. We’ve already listed all of the specs and given our opinion on how we think this new platform fits into Illumina’s lineup and the broader market, but this was our first chance to see it in action. Check out our blog to see how it’s at once both tiny and huge.

[williamhorne]

I bought the first two that were sold by Illumina including Basespace onsite. If interested in details let me know!

[AllSeq]

We'd love to hear how it's working for you - actual outputs, how the data looks compared with previous Illumina machines. Basically anything you're willing to share! I'm sure lots of people are interested.

[williamhorne]

Using High output we are actually getting over 500 million reads per run. Unlike our GAII, and HighSeq, we actually have to pay very close attention to cluster density. The target cluster density for high quality samples is 1.75pM-2pM. Anything above and below will results in under/over clustering. So your samples need to be very exact with concentration.

These are solely made to be streamlined with the BaseSpace. Right now it only works with BaseSpace onsite, not in the cloud as they are having some majority broker issues that still are not resolved. Make sure you do your research in regards to output files and data in regards to basespace because it is not a visual machine. It gives you the output files and you must use 3rd party software on a different computer to view the results. Very annoying.

Overall very impressed with the NextSeq's, not so much BaseSapce.

[bryanbriney]

We've had much the same experience as williamhorne. High Output produced roughly 500M reads, total output from a PE150 run was just shy of 150GB. We clustered at the high end of the recommended range, but still had about 80% Q30.

We've used the NextSeq with BaseSpace and it has some quirks. Run setup and sample entry is awkward if you have more than a handful of samples, although there's an option to upload an Excel file with sample info that we haven't tried yet. Never thought I'd say it, but the new run setup makes me miss Sample Sheets. On the other hand, once the run was going, BaseSpace works wonderfully.

As of right now, the NextSeq doesn't support dual indexes or custom indexes. Dual indexing is reportedly in the pipeline, not sure about custom indexes. Also, you can't start a run that exceeds the stated capacity of the reagent kit. MiSeq throws an error if you try, but it can be bypassed; NextSeq won't let you continue.

Overall, we're very happy. If read lengths get a little longer (come on, PE250!) and the BaseSpace quirks are fixed, the NextSeq will be darn close to perfect.

[GenoMax]

Can someone here comment on the actual alignability/usability of the resulting data?

[bryanbriney]

We're not doing any sort of analysis that involves alignment to a reference, but data quality from our PE150 NextSeq runs has been essentially identical to PE150 Rapid Runs on HiSeq.

[TonyBrooks]

Originally Posted by bryanbriney

As of right now, the NextSeq doesn't support dual indexes or custom indexes. Dual indexing is reportedly in the pipeline, not sure about custom indexes. Also, you can't start a run that exceeds the stated capacity of the reagent kit. MiSeq throws an error if you try, but it can be bypassed; NextSeq won't let you continue.

Does this mean you can't do more than 75 cycles in a 75 cycle kit. I confirmed with tech support that there are 25 additional cycles for dual indexing and we were told we could use those 100 cycles as we wished. We were hoping to do 47|6|47 from the 75 cycle kit

[bryanbriney]

Originally Posted by TonyBrooks

Does this mean you can't do more than 75 cycles in a 75 cycle kit. I confirmed with tech support that there are 25 additional cycles for dual indexing and we were told we could use those 100 cycles as we wished. We were hoping to do 47|6|47 from the 75 cycle kit

I've only tried with a 300 cycle kit and the maximum number of cycles that I could perform was 308, apparently since the earliest kits only support single indexing. The error that we couldn't get past was related to the total number of cycles, and it appears that you can use those cycles however you wish -- I tried designing a run with a single 308 cycle read, and that didn't raise an error (although I didn't actually do the run).

[TonyBrooks]

I can confirm that the most you can get out of a 75 cycle kit is currently 92 cycles (76|8|8). This means you can't use the dark cycles for sequencing like you can on the MiSeq. You can register the run in BaseSpace but you get an error message when you insert the cartridge and you can't bypass it.

[Brian Bushnell]

Do any of you have NextSeq data for something common (phiX, e.coli, mouse, etc) that you would be willing to share? Our NextSeq has consistently produced data of far lower quality than our HiSeq/MiSeq machines, and I'm trying to determine whether this is specific to the individual machine or not.

[nucacidhunter]

Following data are publically available in BaseSpace:

NextSeq 500: TruSeq PCR Free WGS_RTA2.1.3.0 (NA12878)
NextSeq 500: TruSeq Nano 2x151 (PhiX)
NextSeq 500: RNA-Seq (8plex)
NextSeq 500: TruSight One (CEPH Trio replicates)

[Brian Bushnell]

I already looked at this one: "NextSeq 500: TruSeq Nano 2x151 (PhiX)"
...and it's just as bad as ours. But thanks for the suggestion; I'll take a look at the others, as they may have used a different machine. Still, I'm kind of hoping for data from e.g. bryanbriney, as his machine seems to be producing data on-par with HiSeq machines.

[GenoMax]

@nucacidhunder: All those appear to be "standard" (gold?) samples.

Brian: If PhiX standard does not look good then that is worrisome.

[nucacidhunter]

Originally Posted by GenoMax

@nucacidhunder: All those appear to be "standard" (gold?) samples.

You are right. I have access to data from various libraries run on both HiSeq and NextSeq, but unfortunately I am not allowed to discuss it externally.

[Brian Bushnell]

Originally Posted by GenoMax

@nucacidhunder: All those appear to be "standard" (gold?) samples.

Brian: If PhiX standard does not look good then that is worrisome.

I agree, which is why it's surprising that Illumina has made it publicly available - and indeed, that's what they pointed me to when I first started questioning them about NextSeq's quality. Currently they are claiming that a NextSeq machine is 'in spec' as long as at least 70% of the bases are labeled by the machine as at least Q30, regardless of whether those bases are actually correct! I don't know whether this is a group of employees misinterpreting the specification, or if really is Illumina's official policy, but it's worrisome either way.

Our machine self-reports 87% of bases as having quality above 30, and therefore Illumina claims it is in-spec, but the true quality as measured by mapping for the highest-rated bases (claimed Q37) is only Q28, and the majority are much lower. In other words, bases the machine assigns Q37 are wrong 0.16% of the time rather than the claimed 0.02%, so their quality values are inflated by a factor of 8. In reality, 0% of the output is at least Q30, either from our machine or from Illumina's official PhiX data, which I used because they calibrate their machines on PhiX so it should represent the best case scenario.

Does anyone have a different experience?

[pmiguel]

Sorry, no NextSeq data to discuss. But on the issue of quality values vs. empirical error rate -- always seemed to me this would highly depend on the alignment engine and the parameters used. Specifically how gaps (indels) were handled.
A single indel in a read results in nearly all the bases downstream of that indel being scored as "mismatch" unless a gap is introduced into the alignment.

Seems like how gaps are handled could easily explain what Illumina (and I) would call a Q37 base showing up as only Q30 in your analysis. Depending on how you did your alignments...

--
Phillip

[Brian Bushnell]

The alignments were done by an indel-capable aligner. That's not the problem. In fact, the actual quality scores are calculated separately for bases impacted by mismatches only and for bases impacted by indels or SNPs. Furthermore, the exact same analysis was done for HiSeq, MiSeq, and NextSeq, and NextSeq is the only one with the major quality issues.

Here, let me show you. These graphs were all generated by mapping after adapter-trimming the input reads. This is from a HiSeq2500, which shows low error rates and accurate (generally conservative) quality scores:



And this is from a NextSeq, which shows extremely high error rates and vastly inflated quality scores:



You can plainly see that something is very wrong without any mapping whatsoever, just by looking at the base frequency histogram:


Possibly, the high error rate is driven by the A/T ratio divergence, and thus due to a fundamental base-calling or dye-system issue, but I don't know. At any rate, the base frequency divergence, the inflated Q-scores, and the high error rates have now been seen on 3 different independent NextSeq platforms at 3 different facilities (ours, Illumina's, and one of our collaborators') with unrelated organisms and libraries. I have yet to see a NextSeq run from anywhere that did not exhibit these characteristics, but now that I have 3 independent confirmations, I don't really expect that I will see one.

The way I produced these graphs (starting with interleaved reads, and using BBTools):

bbduk.sh in=reads.fastq.gz out=trimmed.fq.gz ktrim=r k=23 hdist=1 mink=11 tpe tbo minlen=90 ref=truseq.fa.gz,nextera.fa.gz

bbmap.sh maxindel=200 in=trimmed.fq.gz mhist=mhist.txt bhist=bhist.txt qhist=qhist.txt qahist=qahist.txt

I encourage anyone who is unable to share their raw data to do the same, and share the histograms. Ideally, for the same library sequenced on both a NextSeq and HiSeq/MiSeq, to eliminate any possible variables.

[pmiguel]

Yow, that is not good news! I can't help but want to blame it on the two-color chemistry, even though I have no basis to do so.

Except -- I mean it still could be an indel issue -- if indels were more common with the NextSeq. What I would fear about this instrument would be bubbles in the flowcell. Seems like it would hard to distinguish no signal (bubble) from no signal (G?). Although I have been assured that the two do look different.

Also, bubbles in the flowcell may be a HiSeq-only thing, I don't know that NextSeqs would have any.

--
Phillip

[GenoMax]

@Brian: Are these results from one NextSeq or do you have an n of > 1?