Barcodes with Illumina MiSeq - (Oct/22/2013 )

Dear all

We are an environmental microbi group who's interested in pooling samples for 16S metagenomic work on the Illumina Miseq. We understand that the Illumina kit contains 96 unique barcodes, hence that is the maximum number of samples we can combine into a reaction. However, we would like to pool more samples (mainly because we have a LARGE number of samples and would like to minimize cost by doing less runs).

We know service providers that can do up to 144 samples, but does anyone here know providers that can do more than that? We know that it's a balance between number of sample per run and reads per sample, but we're curious as to whether there are providers out there who have enough unique barcodes for more than 144 samples per run...

Thanks so much!

Hi, check out this link, there are over 2000 barcodes you can use! 

http://www.earthmicrobiome.org/emp-standard-protocols/16s/