It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The research suggests that scientists could eventually sequence an entire genome in a single lab procedure, whereas at present it can only be sequenced after being broken into pieces in a highly complex and time-consuming process. Fast and inexpensive genome sequencing could allow ordinary people to unlock the secrets of their own DNA, revealing their personal susceptibility to diseases such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and cancer.
"Compared with current technology, this device could lead to much cheaper sequencing: just a few dollars, compared with $1m to sequence an entire genome in 2007. We haven't tried it on a whole genome yet but our initial experiments suggest that you could theoretically do a complete scan of the 3,165 million bases in the human genome within minutes
Oxford Nanopore hopes to bring down both the cost and the time required for sequencing using a technique called nanopore sequencing.
The key to making the method work is controlling the flow of the bases through the protein pore. DNA bases are "too small to be identified on their own: they would fly through," says James Clarke, a scientist at Oxford Nanopore. So a sugar molecule lining the opening bulks it up so that the DNA doesn't zip through too rapidly.