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The Race To $1,000 Human Genome Sequencing

Posted by samzenpus on from the race-for-the-cheap dept.

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."

4 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Designer Humans? by LostCluster2.0 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:Designer Humans? by Yvanhoe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      How close are they from creating a person from picked genes

      Actually quite far, mammals cloning suffer some problems that cheap sequencing will don't help solving.

      how does that affect evolution?

      Evolution ? Of humans ? Since the beginning of medicine, since we save the weak and the sick, evolution is not a natural process anymore, but something we control ourselves as a civilization.

      Cheap sequencing, on the other hand, is a very good news to raise the size of human data that we have. Medicine will improve thanks to that. There is still a lot to understand, and the more data we have, the better.

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  2. I work for one of these companies... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ... 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.

  3. Re:Missing the big picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, your genes change slightly, for example when damage causes cancer. If you baselined yourself at childhood, you could find the cancer genes later in life by sampling the tumor. Your genes are always slightly drifting during your life (replication damage) and merging between generations (reproductive changes).