Advancing genomic research with AI

Explore how AI is transforming genomic research, driving clinical insights, and enabling multiomic discovery

What is genomic AI?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming genomics by offering advanced tools to analyze and interpret complex genetic and multiomic data. Genomic AI complements traditional analysis methods, enhancing accuracy and providing comprehensive genome annotation and interpretation. By integrating accelerated compute, data science, and AI, we can deliver precise sequencing results, significantly reducing analysis time while ensuring rigorous assembly of data across all stages.

Explainable AI, trusted insights

Explainable artificial intelligence brings transparency to genomic data analysis by ensuring that AI-generated insights are accurate, traceable, evidence-based, and easy to review. For researchers interpreting complex genetic data, this clarity is essential to trust the findings and scale interpretation with confidence.

Emedgene software, developed for germline tertiary analysis, applies highly accurate explainable AI to highlight high-priority variants and surface supporting evidence in an intuitive, organized format. This enables faster decision-making while reducing manual workload and maintaining scientific rigor across a range of research applications.

Visual showing how AI connects rare gene variants to a disease and matches patient symptoms to known phenotypes.

How Illumina is making AI accessible

Illumina applies AI across the genomic workflow—from variant calling to interpretation and multiomic analysis—to help researchers gain faster, more accurate, and reproducible insights from complex biological data.

Improving variant calling accuracy using DRAGEN machine learning

Identify relevant DNA and RNA variants in tumor types and conduct in-house comprehensive genomic profiling of tumor samples.

Predicting variant pathogenicity

PrimateAI-3D and Splice AI, leading algorithms from the Illumina Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, are disrupting how we approach drug discovery and precision medicine.

Accelerating variant interpretation with AI

Obtain accurate and informative genetic disease insights.

Predicting impact of non-coding regions of the genome

Predicting gene expression alterations due to promoter mutations is essential for understanding genetic regulation. PromoterAI is a deep learning model that predicts the impact of promoter variants on gene expression by analyzing genomic sequences.

Integrating AI into genomic workflows

AI plays a role at every stage of the genome sequencing workflow, helping to increase efficiency, enhance accuracy, and support confident decision-making. From quality control to interpretation, intelligent tools streamline processes and uncover deeper insights.

1. Quality control and preprocessing

AI-enhanced error correction: Identifies and corrects systematic sequencing errors to improve data quality at the earliest stage.

Predictive QC: Uses machine learning to forecast potential issues before they impact downstream analysis.

2. Sequence analysis

Base calling optimization: Deep learning models translate raw signals into bases (A, T, G, C) with improved speed and accuracy.

Variant calling accuracy: Detects SNVs, indels, and structural variants with enhanced sensitivity and precision.

3. Assembly and annotation

Read assembly acceleration: AI streamlines the alignment and reconstruction of DNA fragments, reducing computational time.

Gene prediction and annotation: Identifies coding regions and predicts gene functions with higher confidence.

4. Downstream analysis

Gene and pathway analysis: Discovers expression patterns and biological pathways associated with disease or phenotypes.

Population-level insights: Analyzes genetic variation across cohorts to support association studies and evolutionary research.

5. Interpretation and reporting

Variant prioritization with explainable AI: Highlights candidate variants and links them to supporting evidence using explainable AI.

Automated literature curation: NLP tools scan databases and publications to surface relevant gene-disease associations.

Genomic AI partnerships

The collaboration will advance technology platforms for the analysis and interpretation of multiomic data, accelerating progress in clinical research, genomics AI development, and drug discovery.

The collaboration will combine leading Illumina AI technologies with Tempus's comprehensive multimodal data platform to train genomic algorithms and ultimately accelerate clinical adoption of molecular testing for patients.

This strategic research collaboration will accelerate drug target discovery by combining their strengths in artificial intelligence (AI) based genome interpretation and genomic analysis techniques along with industry expertise.

Genomic AI resources

“How do you train genomic AI?”

In this video presentation, Kyle Farh (Illumina AI Lab) outlines the AI work being done on the protein coding side and non-coding sides, along with the use of deep learning to predict pathogenic mutations in humans.

Illumina Connected Annotations

Providing annotations of genomic variants you can trust, leveraging 17 databases with the option to access PrimateAI-3D, SpliceAI, PromoterAI, COSMIC, and OMIM.

Key publications

DRAGEN optimizes genomic variant detection

Discover how DRAGEN technology enhances variant detection by accurately identifying a wide range of genomic variations. This study showcases DRAGEN's advanced capabilities in delivering comprehensive and scalable genomic insights.

Keep exploring

Informatics product portfolio

Minimize hands-on time and seamlessly connect your research data across your entire workflow. Our approachable and customizable bioinformatics software solutions are built for deep sequencer integration and efficient scaling.

Illumina innovation roadmap

Our technology innovation and product development roadmap is designed to enable impactful genomic discoveries. Stay up-to-date with upcoming technologies that are being developed into future products, with a focus on ease-of-use and sustainability.

Speak to a specialist

Contact us to learn how informatics software can streamline your journey from sample to insights.