Tailor-made medicines a step closer
Tailor-made medicines a step closer
2008-04-17Newsfeed
A new technique has been found to speed up and cut the cost of genome sequencing.
A new technique has been found to speed up and cut the cost of genome sequencing.
A sample given by James Watson, the Nobel laureate who co-discovered the DNA double helix, was sequenced at the Rothberg Institute for Childhood Diseases Research in Connecticut using the technique.
It dispenses with the lengthy and costly cloning of the sample by bacteria, which is the precursor to the traditional sequencing method.
Instead, the sample is directly amplified by a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The long string of "rungs" is then broken up and unravelled by parallel sequencers, and the data then fed into a computer to be reassembled and analysed.
It comes after the Human Genome Project (HGP), a consortium of public-sector scientists, spent $437m (278m euros) and 13 years to complete the first sequencing of the genome, in 2003.
It tied in a race against biologist Craig Venter, who developed a fast-track sequencing method.
Later, Venter's own genome was sequenced. That project, completed last September, cost around $100m (62.9m euros).
Copyright © The Press Association 2008
