DMC-FX7
ƒ/2.8
5.8 mm
1/15
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One of many rows of ABI 3730xl automated DNA Analyzers for shotgun sequencing. At 30 billion base pairs per year, they could now sequence the human genome in months.
Craig Venter gave us a tour of TIGR.
9 responses to “Riding Shotgun”
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What´s the foresight in time (and costs if you answer to oddwick, too) for these technologies to accomplish the same tasks under the lens of exponential growth? Or is there a techno breakthrough/shift in sight?
When is its expected that "months" will turn to "days", even "hours"?
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Yes, that is the plan. The cost of sequencing has been dropping exponentially already. When the Human Genome project kicked off, they debated whether it would be $1/base pair or $0.10, and they guessed that it would be $0.50
Here’s a graph from Ray Kurzweil:
Here is some background on traditional methods.
Compounding the benefits of automated machines and shotgun sequencing techniques, various labs around the country are working on technologies to further reduce the cost by several orders of magnitude. Some forecast a $1000 human genome by 2010 (that’s .00003 cents per base pair).
Some are working on a nanopore readout. Imagine a membrane with a single nanoscale hole in it. Under a field, single strand DNA would be pulled through the hole, and the capacitive signature of each of the four base pairs would be read off as they passed through.
Other groups are repurposing nature’s natural molecular machinery, DNA polymerase, in very clever ways. They have a soup of modified bases so that as each is attached to a single strand of DNA, and the sugar group is cleaved off, the signature of that particular base can be read off. The DNA polymerase walks along the DNA strand at its normal pace, but cleaves a series of markers for each base.
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DNA polymerase…? ‘polimerasa‘ in Spanish? An enzyme, no?
Our friends the enzymes are always there to show how easy work can be done…! 😉
I vote for that! Isn´t it also research of nanotechs´ pertinence? (as the nanopore readout?)
Thanks for the answers. =)
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Man, I miss molecular biology. I should have stuck with it instead of detouring into ecology. Not that I don’t appreciate my life now, but there is some great science going on that I’ve completely missed out on.
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