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The Race To $1,000 Human Genome Sequencing
ericjones12398 writes "Just one decade ago, sequencing an entire human genome cost upwards of $10 million and took about three years to complete. Now, several companies are racing to provide technology that can sequence a complete human genome in one day for less than $1,000. 'A genome sequence for $1,000 was a pipe dream, just a few years ago,' said Dr. Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine, 'A $1,000 genome in less than one day was not even on the radar, but will transform the clinical applications of sequencing."
Cheap sequencing is a little scary to me. How close are they from creating a person from picked genes and how does that affect evolution?
I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
My genome would make an awesome screensaver!
Will lead to an exponential increase in hypocondriacs
Also, selective breeding would become much more common and people would be prevented from going into careers,etc if their genes arent a good match (someone with a high probability for Alzheimers may be prevented from entering a knowledge based workforce for example)
not to mention the preventive measures that may scale up massively. Right now Americans have peanut free towns, this disease may spread to the rest of the world as well
'A $1,000 genome in less than one day was not even on the radar, but will transform the clinical applications of sequencing."
Cheap enough that it'll transform the legal system too. "Guess who's not your daddy?"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
... and the oddest day of my life recently was finally hooking up the sequencer software to the literature database-- both of which were running locally on my laptop. I was on a city bus with no WiFi and suddenly I could sequence yeast and mosquito genomes, and find out what kind they were.
The problem with this article is it discuses the $1000 sequencing part, which is all data analysis, but not the other $1000, the chemistry part. That, too, is coming down in price, just not as fast.
Cost of chemicals? Machines I think cost in the neighborhood of 100-300k. Doing a complete sequence in less than a day would be great but still not really practical. Is a lab going to have 100 of these bad boys or are only ~250 people (assuming labs don't work weekends) going to get sequenced a year per hospital or whatever? Gene sequencing in general isn't very scientific they don't start with a testable hypothesis and then do measurements. They try to test everything and then come up with a hypothesis to explain it. Having your genes sequenced completely is most likely not necessary. What is needed is a better understanding of what is important and just sequencing those parts. I don't need a $1000 test to tell me what colour my hair is.
Sequencing a gene is not like some kind of one-time exam. Your genes don't change. Once they are sequenced, that's it - you can use the results forever.
If it was only $1000 or even $5000 to sequence your genes, it is more than a worthwhile investment, as you can then compare your sequence against new things constantly being discovered as the state of gene science improves.
Like others have pointed out, at this kind of price point a lot of parents would simply opt to have their child sequenced at birth, to hope to prepare them for a safer future.
It's worth pointing out that it's not just human genomes which will be cheap. I'm excited about the applications this has in biology at large. If sequencing costs continue dropping at anything like their current rate of decrease, whole genome sequencing will soon be opened up to all sorts of interested parties. That has huge implications for taxonomy and phylogenetics, conservation, crop breeding and plant science as a whole.
If genome sequencing costs drop, that means other types of sequencing costs drop too. For example RNA-Seq, which lets us see which genes are currently active at a given point in time, in a sample from an organism. Things which are currently conceptually possible but prohibitively expensive, such as comparing the active genes across hundreds or thousands or species in a particular state, or across a species in hundreds of different environmental conditions, will become possible. Our understanding of life processes will deepen by an order of magnitude, with inevitable benefits in biotech, medicine and agriculture.
Well, this might fit into this topic: can someone explain how the Superb Bird of Paradise evolved to display a smiley face with its feathers to attract females? I mean, birds don't smile!! WTF?!? That's just so weird, and so intriguing. See it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dx2CUMtZ-0
Even when a complete genome sequence run costs the lab $1000, it's going to cost the patient $100,000 on their bill. Because nothing exists in the medical industry to reduce the prices charged to patients. Even insurance corps' leveraging their own and their cartel's buying power to reduce prices paid to medical providers then slap their own extreme charges and fees (and waste) to raise the retail cost back up.
Though not as much in Europe. So Europeans will get to consume American medical exports like quick, cheap sequencing technology. Evolution in action.
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make install -not war
We can sequence genes. We can edit the sequence of many genes we've identified to switch the phenotype they express among meaningful choices. We can edit retroviruses to make them edit genes from A to B in living cells. We can combine sperm and egg IVF to produce a blastocyst. We can even insert full cell nuclei into collected foreign eggs, which we can cultivate into a blastocyst in a lab. We can convert skin cells into egg cells for that purpose.
How close are we to a synthetic womb that can gestate a full blastocyst into a newborn baby?
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make install -not war
When we say sequence a 'genome' for $1k, $10k, etc., we need to specify what constitutes "done". If 100% completion (no gaps) is the bar, then even the initial sequencing of the first genome (for $1bn) isn't done yet. But if the goal is to, say, learn the sequences of the most informative parts of the genome (common variants, say) then we are already way past the $1k barrier.
What scares the shit out of me is the prospect of an artificial
womb. It would allow a country to select its best soldier, then
enhance his DNA and then, with artificial wombs, make
1,000,000 clones.
The first country to do that will have a huge military advantage, which
will led to other countries doing the same resulting in a clone arms
race.
I don't think it will take more than 50 years for the artificial womb to
be created. Will civilisation survive it?
Sequencing the human genome is like Columbus discovering the Americas --
(1) He didn't know where he was going.
(2) He didn't know what he found.
(3) He didn't know where he'd been when he returned.
Any expectation of gleaning specifics from your genome sequencing is just like Queen Isabella expecting Columbus to bring back Google Maps of America.
Does the cost include printing and delivery of your genome?
So what if we can read 3.2 billion base pairs for each human if we can only measure about 100 things related to their actual health. We've been sampling 1.2 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP arrays) on large populations of diseased and healthy individuals for around five years now and haven't come up with much. The geneticists answer to this is to collect more genetic data (full genome sequencing), and their approach is entirely wrong. You could collect an infinite amount of genetic information and you'll still come up short if you can only collect a few data points related to someone's disease/health status. Biomarker research is the path forward, but sadly Francis Collins directs the NIH so we'll have to wait a while for any real progress.
From a recent NY Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/science/many-rare-mutations-may-underpin-diseases.html
All your base are belong to us.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3phkay/
Like we do not have enough trouble with crappy reads right now, frameshifts right in the middle of universal proteins, etc.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I hope for the day when we can get mobile kits that can be used for sequencing genome of all types of fauna / flora that are on this planet
At the way of the degradation of our planet's ecology, more and more species are dying out
If only someone can come out with el-cheapo gene sequence kits that are mobile, that can sequence genes of all types of flora / fauna, then, perhaps, we can collect the genetic sequence of as many species as we can possibly gather, before they disappear all together
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Given all of the stuff discovered regarding epigenetics, getting your sequence probably won't be too useful since I don't think most of the 2nd gen sequencing method capture epigenetic information. However, this would probably be useful in treating cancer or getting more research on it. I can see an oncologist getting your dna sequenced and then sequencing the tumour cells to determine where mutations occurred and then picking drugs that target the pathways that the mutations are affecting. I think some types of cancer are already tested to see if certain genes have been inactivated to determine sequences so it's certainly something that's coming down the pipeline.
In regards to tumours, seeing which genes are inactivated or mutated in order to trigger cancers may allow certain types of cancers to be grouped and treatments that apply to one cancer in the group may be applicable to others in the group. It could potentially provide treatments for rarer cancers that hasn't had much clinical research on it.
there's some overzealous mods in this thread. these are questions that need answers, even if there's a certain level of paranoia involved.
insurance companies in particular should not have access to this data. it should be covered by the strictest of privacy law.
Mais non! We select genes that are advantageous in whichever frame of reference occupies our tiny little brains in the social context around making the decision. The easy cases are defective genes that severely incapacitate. Every other decision can go any number of different ways depending on how the deciding group integrates over a contingent future.
Perhaps a broad consensus emerges that certain genes are linked to sexual predation, at which point advantageous becomes self-referential: any gene with a high coefficient of socialized abortion is disadvantageous by definition. Call these the pariah genes or genoma non grata.
An entrepreneurial eugenicist might soon begin to speculate which genes are at risk of becoming genoma non grata. It would be advantageous to jump the gun to give your progeny an early advantage on convergence to the genetic ubermensch. We can make some early guesses already. Genes correlated with success at calculus in kindergarten are likely to appeal to people with this mindset. A helicopter parent is going to select genes that predispose the offspring to thriving under the rotor wash.
This is more of a social construct than a rational assessment of advantage. Post ante, the genes winnowed out of the population were clearly disadvantageous. Just look at the results.
A few months ago wasn't there a hacker that built a DNA sequencer in a tiny box and it worked? It used specialized algorithms to sequence unless I'm thinking of something else but similar?
"What is sad is that the prices for those "non-sequencing associated functions" have become prohibitive. It's because the decreased price is for crappy sequence. Little bitty pieces that don't tell you anything. Grrrrr....."
I have the hiccups.