It took Christopher Columbus 36 days to reach America. Now you fly to New York in about 8 hours. The first commercial computer, the UNIVAC I costed about $1,550,000 and weighed 13 tons. How much did you spend for your laptop?
Tech devices have been getting smaller, faster and cheaper. We all noticed that. This development is becoming reality in the DNA research field as well, as Dr. Stephen Quake, a Stanford engineer, has recently proven the world.
He recently decoded is own genome sequence with less than $50,000 and just a three-member staff thanks to his Heliscope Single Molecule Sequencer. This innovative machine can sequence a human genome in four weeks with a small technical staff. Companies and labs who have been providing this service relied on hundreds of machines and large staff to get the job done. The most recently sequenced human genome before Dr. Quake’s costed about $250,000 to be decoded, and his machine brings the cost to less than a fifth of that. Not to mention that it is much faster. He said the much-discussed goal of the $1,000 genome could be attained in two or three years. That is the cost at which genome sequencing could start to become a standard part of medical practice. Once again, we are watching modern technology became obsolete live.
We are driving fast down the road of routine full genome sequencing. This will lead to a better understanding of our personal disease risk-factors and prevention.
“You have to have a strong stomach when you look at your own genome,” Dr. Quake said. Looking at his own, he discovered a variant associated with heard disease. Luckily he inherited only from one parent, which leaves him with another healthy gene copy.
The cost of the device is “about $1 million, depending on how hard you bargain,” Dr. Quake said. Funny enough it is about the same as the UNIVAC I. Will genome sequencing devices become part of household first-aid kits in a decade time?
