Slashdot Mirror
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."
No, but it can identify the gene for compulsive behaviour.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I was thinking more along the lines of Ultraviolet, where a blood sample is used to sign a receipt of sorts: grip pen tightly, it draws a small sample, then sign your signature in blood to confirm identity both via DNA and signature.
Also, it's used standalone as identification, so maybe we could get unforgeable (or at least VERY hard to forge) IDs.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
I can't get too enthused about a prototype of something that might one day lead to another prototype, "up to ten years away".
But the article in the sidebar titled "Breakthrough raises possibility of genetic children for same-sex couples" is at least amusingly illustrated with a picture of Bert and Ernie.
I'm more worried about them using it in airports. That will mark the last time I ever fly.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
can it sequence as fast as slashdotters can claim first post?
Nope, but it is following an exponential cost curve. Get it cheap, get it fast, hook it to some truly impressive computing technology to make some sense out of it and you've got?
1984 looking like the Elysian fields? Paradise? Something in between?
As the old Chinese curse goes "May you live in interesting times".
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You know what they say... In Space, no one can hear you complain about Science Fiction.
It drives me nuts when the popular media article doesn't include a citation back to the original research. Here's a link to the article on the Nano Letters website: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/nl103873a
At the heart of the Imperial College device is a silicon chip, with a 50-nanometer nanopore bored through it. DNA strands are propelled at high speed through this hole, and get their coding sequence read by a “tunneling electrode junction” as they come out the other side. This junction consists of a 2-nanometer gap between two platinum wires, with an electrical current passing between them, across the gap. The current interacts with the unique electrical signal given off by each of the DNA strand’s base codes, and the resulting data is then processed by a computer to determine the complete genome sequence. The chips are reportedly quite durable, standing up to repeated uses and washings with no loss in performance.
Doesn't sound too outrageous. I suppose this is one advantage of only two base pairs.
No, he was referring to covertly collected tissue samples contaminated with certain bodily fluids well-known for containing DNA.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
as in, every time- no matter how bad the power situation ever is, especially when 'shutting down to be electronically insignificant to detection' artificial gravity is always a constant.
Millenium Falcon, Jetstar 1, enterprise, firelfy, pigs in space, hitchikers, galactica, dr. who, farscape, stargate atlantis & Universe, starship troopers, tripping the rift....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first one was also done in 'minutes', 1,051,897 of them.
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.
Go figure: My main complaint about the movie was that ultrafast DNA analysis was unrealistic. What's next?. A device that transmits the sound of explosions in space?
The worst part was when they get their DNA analysis results, and its like several sheets of "GAGATTATATGAGAGATAGAGATAG...". Firstly, it would be more like several telephone directories, or perhaps just a list of single mutations. Secondly, it would be meaningless without some extra analysis on top (annotations, basically) even to a geneticist.
Don't basement-dwelling virgins weed themselves out of the gene pool?
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.
Yeah, but nowadays it can be done in a few hours and costs under $10,000. May as well say that the Human Genome Project took 13 years and cost $3 billion - true, but not very relevant.
And we're well on-track for sub-$1,000 genomes in a year or two (without any new breakthrough technologies); which is basically "good enough" for research purposes. As Lincoln Stein pointed out in a recent paper, we're already almost at the point where it costs less to sequence a base pair than it does to store it for computational analysis.
sic transit gloria mundi
He may be an unwanted normal guy that does not want to be tracked by beaurocrats.
NO SIG
Three billion base pairs, two bits per pair, four pairs per byte... About 750 megabytes.
not entirely correct; the short strands can be up to 100 bases long (although caruthers has just published new chemistry for longer stuff) but you can make lots of them, so assembling (done in e coli, not yeast) something that is upto a few thousand bp long is pretty standard
however, assembling a mammalian genome is way beyond curren technology, for lots of reasons (you have to get the DNA into the cell, packaged into chromatin, etc)