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.

Comments

[Jim Bartlett]

Remember that only a small portion of the DNA is in the Y-chromosome, which is the only chromosome passed virtually unchanged from father to son, and which is the basis for SURNAME projects. The mitochondrial DNA is not part of the "human genome"; but there is a growing interest, now, in using markers from the X-chromosome in genealogy research. Unlike the other (autosomal) chromosome pairs, the X-DNA is passed without recombination from fathers to daughters, so it offers different insights. All of the other chromosomes recombine (the child gets some mixture of the chromosomes from the parents), and after a very few generations it gets so "blended" that it's currently of no use to genealogists.