The major benefits of ion semiconductor sequencing are rapid sequencing speed and low upfront and operating costs. This has been enabled by the avoidance of modified nucleotides and optical measurements.
Because the system records natural polymerase-mediated nucleotide incorporation events, sequencing can occur in real-time. In reality, the sequencing rate is limited by the cycling of substrate nucleotides through the system. Ion Torrent Systems Inc., the developer of the technology, claims that each incorporation measurement takes 4 seconds and each run takes about one hour, during which 100-200 nucleotides are sequenced. If the semiconductor chips are improved (as predicted by Moore’s law), the number of reads per chip (and therefore per run) should increase.
The cost of acquiring a pH-mediated sequencer from Ion Torrent Systems Inc. at time of launch was priced at around $50,000 USD, excluding sample preparation equipment and a server for data analysis. The cost per run is also significantly lower than that of alternative automated sequencing methods, at roughly $1,000.