A fifty-dollar genome?
Yuri Milner will finance electronic DNA sequencing
GenapSys, the company that developed the system, will receive $37 million from investors. A message about this is published on the company's website.
The GENIUS system is a device in which both the process of DNA sequence determination and sample preparation takes place. At the same time, it does not exceed a small computer in size. Special magnetic beads are used in the device for cleaning and manipulation of nucleic acid.
As indicated in the patent for the technology (Methods and systems for electronic sequencing), the nucleic acid sequence is determined electronically, without the use of traditional fluorescent dyes. To do this, many individual single-stranded DNA molecules are fixed on a special chip, which is washed with a solution containing one or another nucleotide. If the incoming nucleotide corresponds to the next nucleotide of single-stranded DNA in the cell, then attachment occurs. It is fixed by changing the pH and temperature.
For the development of GENIUS, the company previously received a three-million grant from the National Institutes of Health. According to the attached report, the system is designed to read DNA fragments with a length of at least 1000 bases with an accuracy of more than 99.7 percent. The authors estimate the cost of reading the genome using their system at about $ 50.
Not only GenapSys is developing a compact device for electronic DNA sequencing without the use of dyes. So, in February 2012, Oxford Nanopore announced a USB-connected MinION device that determines the DNA sequence by dragging a molecule through a nanopore. The cost of the device, which has not yet entered the market, should be about $ 900.
Yuri Milner has previously participated in the financing of biotech companies. In December 2012, he invested in the company 23andMe, which provides a genotyping service. In addition, he is the founder of the world's largest scientific prize, the Fundamental Physics Prize, and, together with Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg, the Breakthrough Prize biotechnology prize.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru15.11.2013