The week of Sequence-mas

'Twas the week of Sequence-mas, when all through the industry,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a BALB/c;
The instruments were all running with the utmost of care,
Since we all know Illumina customer service won’t be there;

With fragments nestled all snug in the flowcells,
Visions of nucleotides danced in their nanowells;
And the techs in their labcoats, their eyes all bloodshot,
Staring at clusters and Q-scores and the intensity plot.

When out of the lab arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
Away to the bench I flew in a dash,
Hoping no sequencers had been lost in a crash.

The LEDs were casting the eeriest of glows,
Giving a green luster to all of the shadows.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a flashing red light—oh no! Not this year!

With a silent prayer and an acknowledgement so quick,
I crossed my fingers, hoping it would do the trick.
“You won’t win this time,” I yelled with a grin!
The system responded, and hummed with a din. 

As cycles repeated, I smiled with glee,
For the flowcell was flawless, as perfect as could be.
No clogging, no bubbles, no failures this run,
The sequencing concerto, a symphony had spun.

More rapid than reagents, the analysis came,
As I whistled and muttered and called them by name:

"Now FASTQ! Now BAM! Now, VCF and Assembler!
On MiniMap! On PLINK! On, genome browser!
To the end of the reads! To the Telomere wall!
Now map away! Align away! Process it all!"

The reads streamed in, all bright and clean,
Each passing base with a glittering sheen.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard from the cloud,
The results had been processed—I laughed out loud.

As I uploaded the files and refreshed with great care,
The final data appeared with metrics to spare.
The variants were called, the sequences aligned,
The output so glorious, it blew my mind.

Exomes and genomes, bases complete,
A holiday miracle—the dataset was sweet.
With a sigh of relief, I strode out of sight,
"Happy Sequence-mas to all, and to all, a good night!"

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We'll get back to the goss next week.

I hope you all have a happy holiday!