New Method to Revolutionize DNA Sequencing

Taken from Dick Eastman in EOGN 5 Jan. 2009:

New Method To Revolutionize DNA Sequencing

A new article in the Foresight Institute's web site describes a new method of DNA sequencing. The article is quite technical so I will leave it to others to describe the "3000 ZMWs (waveguides)" and other techniques used. What caught my eye is a claim that "Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000."

Forget 9 markers, forget 24 markers, forget 32 markers. These folks are talking about ALL the markers. Not only will this help identify ancestry, it also opens up all sorts of possibilities about identifying diseases and other inherited traits. If the price this year is to be $1,000, what will the price be ten years from now? Probably only a fraction of this year's price.

Details are available at http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2919.