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TruPath — Illumina

Illumina's synthetic long-read add-on for NovaSeq X — phasing short reads into long-range "constellation mapped reads" at $395 / genome list.

At a glance

  • Vendor / launch date / availability: Illumina; announced at AGBT 2026 and shipping per Illumina AGBT 2026 event page.
  • Chemistry / modality: Synthetic long-read workflow on existing NovaSeq X — short reads are tagged and computationally reassembled into phased "constellation mapped reads" spanning kilobase-scale haplotypes.
  • Throughput (PR): 16 human genomes per day per NovaSeq X under the TruPath workflow per Illumina AGBT 2026 page (vendor PR — no independent benchmark).
  • Read length: Native short reads (2×150 NovaSeq X), phased into long-range constellation mapped reads.
  • Accuracy (PR): NovaSeq X base-call Q-scores carry through (Illumina has not published a TruPath-specific per-base accuracy figure) (vendor PR — no independent benchmark).
  • List price / cost-per-genome: $395 / genome at the TruPath workflow configuration per Illumina AGBT 2026 page.

What's new vs prior generation

TruPath is a chemistry + bioinformatics layer on top of the existing NovaSeq X — Illumina's answer to PacBio HiFi and Oxford Nanopore for haplotype phasing and structural-variant resolution without buying a separate long-read instrument. It is the consumer-side counterpart to Illumina's separately previewed Q70 duplex chemistry roadmap (early access H2 2026). GenomeWeb's spatial / multiomics AGBT recap frames the combined TruPath + Q70 + spatial announcement as Illumina's broadest single-AGBT release in years.

Headline benchmarks

  • 16 genomes / day per NovaSeq X under the TruPath workflow at $395 / genome (vendor PR — no independent benchmark) — Illumina AGBT 2026 page.

Independent benchmark data on phasing accuracy, SV recall, and effective long-range read length has not yet surfaced — third-party validation gap noted.

Reception / competitive context

TruPath competes with PacBio HiFi / Revio SPRQ (native long-read at HiFi accuracy, ~$300 / genome with SPRQ-Nx per Bio-IT World JPM 2026 coverage) on cost, and with Oxford Nanopore on read length. Illumina's bet is that most NovaSeq X sites would rather add a synthetic long-read chemistry than acquire a separate long-read instrument. The companion Q70 duplex kits (early access H2 2026) target the duplex-accuracy floor that PacBio HiFi and Roche SBX have been pulling toward.

Sources