Australian and New Zealand researchers are part of an international project of mutual interest (and age-old bad jokes) - the sequencing of the sheep genome. The difference for the International Sheep Genomics Consortium is the availability of short-read sequencing technology.

A new dimension to commercial next-generation sequencing applications - one that could potentially pose a threat to more-established microarray technologies - has been revealed in two recent papers.

Affymetrix has filed suit against Illumina, alleging infringement of six patents for various aspects of arrays, software, and hardware awarded between 1996 and 2003.

'Automate' has become the new mantra for life science technology innovators, writes Malorye Branca.