Intel bets millions on speedy DNA sequencing chips Intel is among several investors pumping $100m into a biotech start-up that wants to make mapping an individual's genome as routine as taking an X-ray. Pacific Biosciences of Menlo Park, California anticipates that by 2013 it will be able to sell a DNA sequencer that can tackle a person's entire hereditary information in as …
A human genome fits into 1.5GB (uncompressed). If they succeed in sequencing a human in 15 minutes with mass producable kit, you could reasonably go to a pharmacy and walk out with your sequence on a flash key.
At the moment, if you get diagnosed with something expensive, pretending the diagnosis came later so you can get cheap insurance is naughty. For illnesses with a strong genetic link, it wil be harder to lie convincingly.
DNA testing will be profitable for embryos. Decide for yourself if you like to idea.
It's actually understanding the data when it comes off the line.
The Bioinformatics software to analyze the data isn't the worlds most efficient! It requires thousands of cpu hours to find a single SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism). With a single a full genome being available in 15 minutes it's going to require an enormous cpu farm just to keep up!
Oh wait.... now I get it....
Sanger sequencing is on the way out as the current 'Next Generation Sequencing' systems (by Illumina, 454 Life Sciences and ABI) are far quicker with equivalent accuracy and at a fraction of the cost.
The sequencing of the James Watson genome, recently publically release (http://jimwatsonsequence.cshl.edu), was performed using one of the NGS systems.
The current problems we're having with these technologies is the amount data they produce: terabytes of raw data and tens of gigabytes of processed data for each run per machine. With runs taking 3-4 days each it mounts up quickly...
It'll be interesting to see what improvements this new method will bring.
If you take the risk and doubt out of insurace then it's not insurance it's fixed. You would not bet on something if you knew the outcome would not be in your favour.
I think if the insurance companies correctly adjust your premium according to acurate predictions of your risk then you may comclude that if they will insure you then don't bother and if they won't insure you then you need it. They will have to be very careful how they handle this imormation because without any risk why would someone bother with insurance.
I suspect that having your DNA sequence on a memory stick won't be as valuable as people are hoping. Trying to determine what it all means will take years.
My girlfriend has just been diagnosed with secondary liver cancer. The primary cancer was due to a genetic defect that gave her an 80% risk of developing cancer. She was in remission and had been due to have surgery to eliminate the risk of further primary cancers.
Any technology that can reduce the time and cost of genetic screening and therefore enable more people to have timely preventative treatment and to make decisions about their lives has got to be a good thing.
Already they've discovered that RNA is also required to understand how the body works.
Also I gather from this News statement that by reading longer sequences, that they're not actually reading *all* the individual DNA codes? So its not going to be especially accurate is it?
So DNA reading will end up just used for fingerprinting a person.
One thing I've never understood from hearing about DNA evidence. Is that the DNA evidence found at the scene of a crime matches the person on trial to within 1 in 1 billion people for example.
But there are 6 billion people on the planet. So couldn't one of these other 5 people be in the same Town? Reasonable doubt surely?
...is not dead (sadly)!
Just because it may be technically possible to sequence an individual's genome in the near future it does not mean we know their fate.
We (scientists) still understand very little about the (human) genome and when it comes down to understanding how all diseases/traits link to certain genes we know even less. We are a long way from GATTACA, but the government is trying hard to get there despite the science >-|
@Stuart Halliday
Forensic DNA matches only look for 'markers' that are found on DNA. The patterns of these markers are sufficiently diverse to be able to differentiate between two individuals with a probability you quote. This is a *theoretical* measure. In practise no-one really knows what the true probability is...
BTW it's great to see someone mention bioinformatics here. It is the future of science, don't you know ;)
DNA and gene based drugs are a wonderful fantastic idea, but they open the door to some of the worlds most terrible possibilities. Think about it,..... if they can create a drug that is based on your dna/genes, and therefore only effect you, they can make a disease to do that very same thing. They could create a virus that could be airborne and highly contagious but would only effect one person and his family.
That is one magic loogie
The pop media has convinced people that all you need is DNA, then you have the creature.
Well, there is the epigenetics (several layers), the mitochondrial DNA (and associated epigenetics), the celllular informatics and proteomics that are carried across the germ line (largely unexplored as people wander around in the DNA)...
Not to speak of phenotypical changes as that single cell expands into trillions of cells, including maternal modulations of the genetic expressions, maternal microchimerae effects which can extend for the lifespan of the "product", .... well, you get the picture.
Just when you thought you could clone Flicka, you discover that it is not so simple after all!
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