DNA sequencing superexplosion

April 6, 2008

We had a guy come talk one day about how awesome sequencing power

would soon be. Here's a news article on the subject:

Apparently it is possible to sequence without PCR amplification, and

at least some think it will one day be practiced this way. News to me.

More importantly:

> The competition is driving the field rapidly toward the lofty goal

of a $1,000 human genome sequence, which thinks will be reached

in less than five years. " Maybe that will be Helicos and maybe not, "

he says. " There are a lot of people pushing in that direction. "

It has already been done at $70,000-100,000 according to this article.

At $1,000 we could of course sequence one million people for one

billion dollars, which is 1/30 of the annual NIH budget. This should

be enough to completely resolve the genetics of all common diseases, I

think. MS has a point prevalance around 0.15% (or something) and CFS

probably around 0.4%, so a sample of one million people should contain

1,500 MS patients and 4,000 CFS patients.

Less than five years! I hope so...

I would think there would be $10 billion available for this over 3

years or so, between the US, Europe, and Australia, so if necessary it

should be possible to do 10 million people.

(Or a million at $10,000 a head, if $1,000 a head begins to look

unfeasible.)

That's assuming the NIH is willing to deprive a lot of people of their

grant money for a few years. (I don't think anyone could seriously

doubt that it's worth it.)

This will absolutely kick ass.

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