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Colleagues,

As reported in the New York Times ... One of the oldest names in computing is joining the race to sequence the genome for $1,000 ... I.B.M. plans to give technical details of its effort to reach and surpass that goal, ultimately bringing the cost to as low as $100, making a personal genome cheaper than a ticket to a Broadway play...

... The project places I.B.M. squarely in the middle of an international race to drive down the cost of gene sequencing to help move toward an era of personalized medicine. The hope is that tailored genomic medicine would offer significant improvements in diagnosis and treatment ... I.B.M. already has a wide range of scientific and commercial efforts in fields like manufacturing supercomputers designed specifically for modeling biological processes. The company’s researchers and executives hope to use its expertise in semiconductor manufacturing, computing and material science to design an integrated sequencing machine that will offer advances both in accuracy and speed, and will lower the cost ...

... DNA sequencing began at academic research centers in the 1970s, and the original Human Genome Project successfully sequenced the first genome in 2001 and cost roughly $1 billion ... Since then, the field has accelerated. In the last four to five years, the cost of sequencing has been falling at a rate of tenfold annually ...

... At least 17 startup and existing companies are in the sequencing race, pursuing a range of third-generation technologies. Sequencing the human genome now costs $5,000 to $50,000, although ... none of the efforts so far had been completely successful and no research group had yet sequenced the entire genome of a single individual...

... The I.B.M. approach is based on what the company describes as a “DNA transistor,” which it hopes will be capable of reading individual nucleotides in a single strand of DNA as it is pulled through an atomic-size hole known as a nanopore...

Read on at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/06dna.html?th&emc=th

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Replies to This Forum Entry

Colleagues,

DNA chip: A strand of DNA moving through a silicon chip sandwiched with electrodes, was created on an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. The brown and yellow bands represent metal and insulating layers.
Credit: IBM Research

Article from MIT TechReview that expands on the IBM technology ... "IBM scientists are developing microchips for genome sequencing ... IBM researchers are developing a chip for cheaper, faster DNA sequencing using fabrication techniques refined through semiconducting manufacturing. The chip uses layered electrodes to control the movement of individual DNA molecules and exploits a technique called nanopore sequencing. The approach could allow DNA to be passed through a sensor that would rapidly read off its genetic code...

Read an at: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23589/?nlid=2407

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