Science Focus
original post »Nearly three years ago, a company called Oxford Nanopore made waves when it announced the development of DNA sequencing technology that was simple and compact enough to fit on a USB stick. The intervening years have been filled with product delays and apparent problems with read accuracy. This morning, however, a paper is being released that relies on the technology, and while the technology still has problems, it can help provide some medically relevant information.
Most methods of studying DNA perform what's called "sequencing by synthesis." They make a new copy of the DNA strand being sequenced, keeping track of which base is added to each location. This is highly effective, but it requires the use of consumables: each base added has to be supplied to the reaction, as does the enzyme that does the adding. All of this adds to the cost of the sequencing reaction, and it places a limit on how cheap we can make the process of sequencing a genome.
Oxford Nanopore's method is fundamentally different. Instead of adding new bases, the DNA strand to be sequenced is stuffed through a protein with a hole in the middle. As each base passes through this pore, its electrical properties are read, allowing the hardware to determine which base is going by. Although the pore will have a finite lifetime, the process doesn't need any specialized chemicals or enzymes and therefore has the potential to be very cheap.
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
#science
» see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/OPyw2jLs4qE/
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'
No comments:
Post a Comment