New Tech Promises Cheap Gene Sequencing In Minutes

Zothecula writes "Sequencing an entire genome is currently a highly complex, time-consuming process – the DNA must be broken down into segments and replicated, utilizing chemicals that destroy the original sample. Scientists from Imperial College London, however, have just announced the development of a prototype device that could lead to technology capable of sequencing a human genome within minutes, at a cost of just a few dollars. By contrast, when sequencing of the genome of Dr. James Watson (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) was completed in 2007, it had taken two years and cost US$1 million."

NOT gay

[snookerhog]

they are not gay! otherwise Bert would have been in the tub with Ernie instead of the duck.

Moore's Law of DNA

[Fractal Dice]

Ignoring any one specific advance in technology, the cost per base pair of sequencing DNA has dropping exponentially. The cost to sequence an entire human genome has gone from billions of dollars in 1990 to about $40,000 in 2010. By 2015, it will probably cross the $1000 barrier.

By 2020, it will likely be under $100 - at which point it might as well be a standard part of a person's medical file.

By 2030, it could under $1 - amateur biologists could start collecting genomes like poleroids while hiking.

By 2040, it could be a fraction of penny - cough on a sensor, get a readout of all the microbes in your lungs, what strain they are and, by looking at the specific mutations between generations and comparing to a database of everyone else's microbes, the likely person who infected you.

Re:Moore's Law of DNA

[brteag00]

I don't argue that the cost-per-base of sequence is dropping dramatically - but comparing the output of an Illumina sequencer [illumina.com] (the tens-of-thousands of dollars pricepoint) to the Human Genome Project is misleading. The reason the HGP cost so much is the quality of the reference sequence they produced - the so-called Bermuda standard [genome.gov], of one error in 10,000 bases. The HGP researchers assembled all those individual sequence reads into an almost unbroken reference of astounding quality and utility.

In comparison, the sequence data people are producing today is crap. The individual reads are 30-80 base pairs and get put together into contiguous runs of only several thousand bases of length, on average. This is good for some kinds of work, but it doesn't give nearly the same picture of the genome that made the original human genome sequence such a masterpiece.

(I'm a genomics grad student. Can you tell?)