Comments on: New benchtop sequencers shipping; sequence genome in under a day

By: Bruce Wright

Bruce Wright — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 10:09:42 +0000

That’s true for congenital genetic illnesses, but it’s not true for diseases like cancer, which usually involve mutations from one’s original DNA makeup. However even for cancer, knowing the original DNA baseline can be helpful, since some genetic profiles are more prone to the development of cancer than others.

I can easily see this being used for sequencing several samples of cancer cells from cancer patients (very often not all cancer cells from a single tumor share the exact same DNA profile).

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 07:04:21 +0000

Presumably that could be reduced if you only recorded the differences with an average genome and put it in a zip file.

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 03:34:11 +0000

Sequencing the DNA is only the tip of the iceburg. Next gen sequencers need to look also at methylation of amino acids in order to determine gene expression. As related to methylation, 3d configuration of the genome will also start to become important as more is learnt about structure to gene expression. Sequencing 3 billion base pairs is only the beginning and will one day look like mendelian genetics does now to us.

By: EM

EM — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:31:30 +0000

Big Brother approves. Double plus good.

By: asiwel

asiwel — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 22:14:35 +0000

One assumes that having your DNA sequenced is something that needs to be done only once in a lifetime – if done “correctly” and stored in your electronic medical records. This is not like MRIs and expensive lab tests and explorations that are done every whipstitch for whatever ails you. So if the benefits are as great as are hoped for (and they should be), the customer and insurance company should benefit and the cost be amortized over one’s entire lifetime and all the points and ailments in between, Why not simply add DNA analysis to the OB/GYN fees at birth?

By: Bri

Bri — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 14:18:02 +0000

It will probably be only research at first anyway. No insurance company is going to want to pay for it, until it save them money.

By: Chrispium

Chrispium — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 10:51:16 +0000

I put: How much memory would be required to store human DNA? into Google and got a range of answers from about 700 Mb to about 6 Gb.

By: Grey

Grey — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:55:41 +0000

I’m curious about – How much memory would be required to store human DNA?

By: gaoptimize

gaoptimize — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:24:19 +0000

So, lets assume 25% profit, 25% to amoritize the equipment in one year, 25% labor at $150K/year, and $1,000 of materials per genome, 200 a year per device. I think we are still looking at about a $4,000 genome, not $1,000 as recently advertised in response to an x-prize. We are still 2 or 3 years away from a $1,000 genome, when I will get mine done.

By: Bri

Bri — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 23:53:17 +0000

These things are going to turbo charge genetic research. It’s effects on medicine will be equally profound. For cancer treatments of today it will remove so much of the guess work. Soon their use will be as common as an MRI.