Wednesday, September 7, 2011

New tech sequences bacterial genome in 2 hrs



http://www.iontorrent.com/technology-how-does-it-work-more/


How it works (if you're into this kind of thing): 
many miniwells, each with strand of DNA (stands that you want to sequence) anchored. Wash specific nucleotide (ex. dATP) over the slide. If that specific nucleotide gets incorporated, sensors detect the release of H+ ions from the reaction which lets you know "yep, that was an A". Generates 100 bp length reads - of course it's 1.4 million of them. They sequenced bacterial genomes (5x-10x coverage) in 2 hours with just 6 hours of prep time for each sample. 


Interestingly enough, they also sequenced Gordon Moore's genome as a test. He's the guy who developed Moore's Law which describes how technology doubles. His genome coast $50K to do but they think that this technology will advance quickly to get close to that target $1000 genome that everyone talks about. Not sure how much the bacterial genomes cost each



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