If you're hankering to sequence your own genomes, this may be good news: Harvard researchers claim to have found a faster, cheaper way to do so. Cheaper meaning only about two million bucks per person.
George Church and colleagues at Harvard Medical School hope eventually to reduce the cost further to $1,000 per genome — the entire DNA code of a person, plant or other organism.
Their new method, described in a report in the journal Science, bypasses the traditional gel-based technology for analyzing DNA and instead uses color-coded beads, a microscope and a camera. It is considerably cheaper than the current methods, which cost an estimated $20 million for a human genome.
Link to AP story. Details in the article "Cut-Rate Genomes on the Horizon?" by Elizabeth Pennisi, in the current issue of Science magazine (article currently locked for paid subscribers only)
Reader comment: Andy says:
The researchers might be willing to do it for $2 Mil, but they say that if you do it yourself it only takes $140,000 in equipment. Future project for Make?
