Relationship between DNA sequencing time and base call accuracy

Question

[naumanahmedraja]

Talking about the illuminia DNA sequencing (SBS). My understanding is:

1- There is direct relationship between base call accuracy and total process run time.

2- There is a direct relationship between the DNA read length and total process run time

3- There is no relationship between the throughput of a run (number of reads generated) and total process run time as all the reads are sequenced in parallel.

Are my above statements true?

Answer 1

[Devon Ryan]

1 isn't really true in and of itself, rather there's a relationship between read length and error rate. You could speed up/slow down things and that relationship wouldn't change. 2 and 3 are correct.

[naumanahmedraja]

Does it mean that that the process run time can be decreased keeping the same read length and error rate?. If this is true than what is lost?. Throughput or something else?

[Devon Ryan]

Let's look the other way, you could slow the machine down by having longer pauses between the cycles, but that wouldn't make it notably less reliable. It's just a matter of there being a certain error rate per cycle, and therefore you're more likely to see errors the more cycles you have.