Genomics & Sequencing

Buying guide

Prices run from EUR 1 to EUR 533.942. That is the widest span of any grouping on the site, because it holds both ends of a pipeline in one place. At the low end sit consumable-adjacent items and small molecular tools, the kind a bench orders by the box. At the high end sit the dna sequencers and the larger automated liquid handling platforms, which is where the expensive part of this work concentrates: the reading instrument and the automation that feeds it account for most of a serious setup's cost, while amplification and preparation gear sit well below them.

Condition weighs on the decision across the whole set. 96 percent of the listings are used. For a pipeline assembled from several categories at once, that share is what makes a full setup reachable, since the instruments are listed below new pricing. Where a buyer is weighing a used reader or handler against new, the warranty is arranged in consultation for the specific listing rather than fixed across the catalogue, so the individual listing is where that question gets answered.

The catalogue draws on 151 verified suppliers and distributors across 92 countries. Parts for an instrument already in service can be sourced via Questpair, and where a listing lacks its manuals, specialists respond within the hour. Match the spend to the stage: the reading and automation end carries the large figures, so that is where condition and listing detail deserve the closest look before buying.

Types of Genomics & Sequencing

Genomics and sequencing is not one machine but a pipeline, and the equipment it draws on spans dna sequencers, pcr equipment, genome editing and molecular tools, automated liquid handling, microarray scanners and sample preparation gear. These do not substitute for one another; they sit in sequence, and the order below follows the order the work is actually done in. Each stage places its own demand on the instrument it needs, and two of them constrain each other in ways no single category page can show.

How does sample preparation bind the whole run?

Everything downstream reads whatever the preparation stage hands it, which is why this is where throughput and cost quietly concentrate. Nucleic acid is extracted, fragmented, quantified and turned into a library before anything is read. Extraction kit, fluorometers and bead-based cleanup sit here, and the quality they produce is the ceiling on what the sequencer can return: a degraded or poorly quantified input is not recovered later. The binding constraint is between this stage and the next two. A platform that reads a thousand samples a day needs libraries built at that rate, so the preparation bench, not the reader, is what sets the real pace. Where this step runs by hand it caps throughput regardless of how fast the instrument downstream is.

Automating the pipetting

Once sample counts climb, manual pipetting stops being the bottleneck you can live with. Automated liquid handling platforms move and mix the small, repeated volumes that library prep and plate setup demand, which is where this category earns its place. The constraint runs both ways with preparation: a liquid handler is only worth its bench space when the number of samples justifies the setup, and below that line the manual route is cheaper and no slower. Above it, the handler is what lets preparation keep pace with a high-throughput reader. Deck format and compatible plate types decide whether a given platform fits an existing workflow, so the step is less about the machine alone than about what it has to feed.

Which instrument does the reading?

This is the stage the field is named for. dna sequencers span short-read and long-read chemistries, and the two answer different questions: one for accurate variant calling at depth, the other for resolving structure and long repeats. Alongside them, pcr equipment covers the amplification that both targeted sequencing and standalone assays depend on, and microarray scanners read fixed-content hybridisation arrays where the question is known in advance rather than open. The choice here is driven by read length, run time and the per-run sample batch, all of which have to match what the preparation and handling stages upstream can actually deliver.

Editing and the molecular toolkit

Genome editing and molecular tools belong to the half of this work that writes rather than reads. CRISPR-associated reagents, nucleases and the molecular biology instruments around them let a sequence be altered and the result verified, usually by sequencing the edited product. The loop closes back on the reading stage, which is why editing rarely stands alone on a bench: it leans on the same preparation, amplification and readout equipment that the rest of the pipeline uses. Grouped under genomics and sequencing on the catalogue are also biotech and life sciences and clinical laboratory equipment, which cover the broader instrumentation a working molecular lab keeps around these core steps.