U.S. professor sequences own genome in weeks
SAN FRANCISCO -- It might not be long until there is a gene scanner in every doctor's office, as DNA sequencing becomes faster and cheaper.
A Stanford University professor reported Monday that he has sequenced his entire genome in a few weeks for under $50,000 using a single machine.
Six years ago, hundreds of researchers at the Human Genome Project completed the same task for $300 million. It took 13 years.
"It's continuing down the path to making it so every Tom, Dick and Harry are going to have their genomes sequenced," said Eddy Rubin, director of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, who was not involved in the study.
The breakneck pace of technological progress in the field of DNA sequencing has raised hopes that affordable gene scans will be available to all patients soon.
Researchers hope cheap gene sequencing will lead to highly customized disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment tailored to an individual's genetic code.
Only a handful of human genomes have been sequenced so far. Typically those scans have used several machines working side-by-side to read the four chemicals that make up a "letter" in the DNA sequence.
"We've shown it can be done with one machine and just three people, with just one operating the machine," said Stanford bioengineering professor Stephen Quake, whose results were published in the journal Nature Biotechnology on Monday.
"It makes genome science accessible to a much broader segment of the scientific community," he said. "It's really democratizing the fruits of the genome revolution."
Still, the cost of entry remains high. The machine Quake used to read his DNA retails for $1 million. The $48,000 cost of his scan was determined as an average based on the total number of scans the machine is expected to be able to perform, he said.
Quake's machine is sold by Helicos Biosciences, a company he co-founded. Competitors say their machines can sequence human genomes for the same or lower costs at a similar speed.
