It depends on the difficulty of the design. We have a robust assay design algorithm that handles most designs relatively quickly. One can expect between 3 days to 2 weeks turnaround time (TAT) starting from the moment our design team start working on the requests. The following are the most common reasons for potentially longer design times:
1. non-human targets. We will need to verify and format the reference genome before we can start the design. Additional information might be needed on top of the genomic sequence in some cases;
2. modification of original request after the design has started. If the change to the design request involves change of amplicon length, adding or removing new targets or other changes that require a re-design of the panel, it is our rule that it will be viewed as a new panel request and we shall proceed with the modification only after we finished other customers request that we might be working on at the time.
3. difficult regions that require special attention. Our design usually have a >95% in silico design coverage. However, there are often cases where some regions cannot be covered based on the design requirements or due to the nature of the target sequences. If those regions are deemed ‘must-haves’ for a given design, we will need to treat them as special instances and may delay the delivery of the panel.
