oatmeal and bears

jtotheizzoe:

Nanopore DNA Sequencing

Does that mean anything to you? It should. People who know me know that I am prone to hyperbole (e.g. “This is the best freakin’ sandwich I have ever had, like, in history”), but believe me when I say that This. Changes. Everything.

Critics of genomics (even Craig Venter, “Mr. Genome” himself) have lamented the fact that sequencing our genome has not resulted in discovering the genetic basis of every disease. We have learned that human biology is orders of magnitude more complicated, redundant and networked than we ever imagined. But many people (including me) believe that we will only learn what we need to by sequencing more genomes.

Technologies like Oxford Nanopore’s, should they live up to their promises (or even half their promises), will make genome sequencing so cheap and so fast, that we will no longer be limited by how much genetic data we can assemble, only what we can process.

We will have to make sure that this doesn’t get applied to medicine all willy-nilly (true personalized medicine is still far-off), and watching for genomic snake oil hucksters will fall on all of our shoulders (they should be tarred, and then feathered). Kids: study that computer science. We’re gonna have a LOT of data to analyze.

I MEAN SERIOUSLY! THEY MADE A GENOME SEQUENCER THE SIZE OF A USB DRIVE THAT COSTS LESS THAN $1,000!! I’M LOSING MY MIND HERE!

Previously: Genome sequencing facts

(via Oxford Nanopore on Vimeo, for more check out Nature News)

This is awesome, I believe there’s a USB sized (!) nanapore-based sequencer called the miniON which can sequence in minutes if the genome is simple! Up to 6 hours for the human genome, but still, all from something the size of a USB stick?!