Oxford Nanopore, leading firm in the field of mapping DNA, just announced two products that could dramatically change the field of DNA sequencing: a new DNA sequencer that may be able to handle a human genome in 15 minutes, and a USB thumb drive DNA sequencer that can read DNA directly from blood with no prep work.
A nanopore is a ring of proteins, made by a bacterium, through which DNA can be threaded, like a string through a bead. In the method of DNA sequencing just debuted by Oxford Nanopore Technologies, long, intact strands of DNA are shunted through nanopores on a chip, and the electrical conductivity of each nucleic acid as it comes through the pore lets scientists tell which DNA “letter” it is—A, T, G, or C. A long strand of DNA analyzed this way, importantly, isn’t destroyed, so it can be reanalyzed, and errors introduced in processes that use chopping are also avoided. Using such basic physical laws to deduce a DNA sequence is a simple, elegant solution to a tough problem. That’s perhaps why nanopore sequencing methods have attracted some significant investment in recent years: the UN National Human Genome Research Institute had, by 2008, given $40 million to groups pursuing nanopore sequencing.
Scientists are genuinely, if cautiously, excited by what they’ve seen of Oxford Nanopore’s work. “I think it is all credible,” Chad Nusbaum, co-director of the Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Nature News. “I would bet they are even underplaying it because they don’t want to risk overpromising.” For scientists talking about biotech, that’s pretty hopeful phrasing.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/17/the-next-dna-disruptor/
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