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James Watson's Genome Sequenced |
HenryTo
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 Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:12 am Post subject: James Watson's Genome Sequenced |
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This was a two-month US$1 million project between 454 Life Sciences Corp and Baylor College of Medicine, compared to the Human Genome Project which took 13 years to complete and at a whopping sum of $3 billion. Give it another ten years and sequencing a genome would ultimately take a day and $1,000 to complete for the average Joe.
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Scientist gets own personal genome map By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 1, 5:35 PM ET
HOUSTON - The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who helped discover the molecular structure of DNA has become the first person to receive his own personal genome map.
The map, a breakdown of his DNA that shows illnesses he is predisposed to contracting, is the first step in making the sequencing of individual human genomes quick, affordable and a routine part of medical care, according to researchers.
"I knew I was risking possible anxiety when I saw it," said 79-year-old James Watson, who was presented the map during a ceremony at Baylor College of Medicine. "But it's much more that if I don't sleep at night it's due to thinking about
Iraq rather than about my genome."
Watson was chosen for the project because of his contributions to the field, and the map was completed after he submitted a blood sample.
A review showed he has some variances that could induce cancer — which appeared to mirror his actual health. Watson said that he has had skin cancer and that his sister had breast cancer.
The $1 million, two-month project was a collaboration between 454 Life Sciences Corp., a Connecticut company that specializes in DNA sequencing, and Baylor College of Medicine's Human Genome Sequencing Center. At the moment, there are no plans to complete more maps in the immediate future, though researchers want to eventually map more people.
Jonathan Rothberg, founder and former chairman of 454 Life Sciences, said the price of mapping someone's genome sequence could eventually drop to $1,000, making it easy for people to incorporate it into their medical care.
That potential price tag is in sharp contrast to the cost of the
Human Genome Project, the international, publicly financed effort to first identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. That project, seen as one of history's great scientific milestones, cost $3 billion and was completed in 2003, after 13 years.
Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize for his role in discovering the structure of DNA in 1953 and who launched the Human Genome Project in 1990, said thousands more individual human genomes need to be mapped out before researchers can make better sense of the information they can provide.
Amy McGuire, an assistant professor of medicine with Baylor's Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, said integrating human genomes into medical diagnoses raises various ethical questions. Those include what to do when they reveal personal information about a patient's relatives and whether someone's genetic code could result in discrimination from insurance companies or employers.
"I think we'll have a healthier and more compassionate world 50 years from now because of the technological advances we are celebrating today," Watson said.
While Watson said that he would review the map further, there was at least one part he would avoid. He planned to skip the section of the map that would tell him if he was at risk for
Alzheimer's disease, which his grandmother died from.
That, he said, he didn't want to know. |
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James Watson's Genome Sequenced Replies |
HenryTo
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| Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 9:01 pm Post subject: |
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$20,000 per genome is still the number to beat. For the first time, a family of 4 has their genes sequenced:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorials/2011322419_edit12genome.html
| Quote: | Deciphering the genes of unrelated individuals has been done. A handful of people have had their genetic make up fully mapped, as have some families of three.
But scientists at the Institute for Systems Biology in Fremont pushed the dial forward. The genetic results from a family of four allow scientists to see how genes flow from parents to children. That can't be done in individuals or a family of three.
Institute researchers laid out the genome of a Utah family of four and swiftly identified the gene responsible for a disease called Miller syndrome. The condition is extremely rare — only 30 cases diagnosed worldwide — and characterized by facial and limb malformations.
Researchers knew Miller syndrome is genetic. But analyzing the genetic makeup of the entire family allowed them to quickly pinpoint the responsible gene from thousands of others. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:26 pm Post subject: |
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Ivana Trump notwithstanding, DNA sampling remains the ultimate discretionary purchase:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/business/20consumergene.html?ref=business
Question: how much is because what is still unknowable and how much because what is NOT wanted to be known?
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rffrydr
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HenryTo
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 6:44 am Post subject: |
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Update on genome sequencing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=a3PrmFUGvusk
| Quote: | Illumina sold 128 of the HiSeq 2000 systems, which can sequence a human genome for less than $10,000, to the Beijing Genomics Institute, a research group funded partially by the Chinese government. The company yesterday also reported preliminary fourth-quarter sales topping analysts’ estimates.
The new machines trim the time it takes to map a genome and may cut costs by fivefold to 10-fold, said Elaine Mardis, co- director of the Genome Center at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Illumina is among companies, such as Carlsbad, California-based Life Technologies Corp., racing to develop faster sequencing systems, aimed at a better understanding of diseases and helping drug development.
“This is going to open up a door for lots of new kinds of exciting studies,” Mardis said in a telephone interview yesterday. “This announcement from Illumina raises the bar in a pretty significant way.”
San Diego-based Illumina said two years ago it had sequenced a human genome in four weeks at a cost of $100,000. The company’s new system, in addition to analyzing the genome at a lower cost, is faster and more powerful than competitors, said Ross Muken, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in New York. |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:51 am Post subject: |
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Nearly a decade after Celera sequenced the genome of its founder, Craig Venter, this technology is finally paying dividends:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23522/
| Quote: | Last year, when more than 100 of the world's top geneticists, technologists, and clinicians converged on Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York for the first annual Personal-Genomes conference, the main focus was James Watson's genome. The codiscoverer of the structure of DNA was the first to have his genome sequenced and published (aside from Craig Venter, who used his own DNA for the private arm of the human genome project.) Watson sat in the front row of the lecture hall as scientists presented their analysis of his genome. They paid special attention to the number of single-letter variations or small insertions and deletions in his DNA--clues as to whether he had a genetic variation that slightly boosted his risk for heart disease or cancer. But there was very little usable information in the genome.
That has all changed. In the last year, the number of sequenced, published genomes has shot up from two or three to approximately nine, with another 40 or so genomes sequenced but not yet published. "While the numbers are still small numbers, we are starting to put this research into the real disease context and get something out of it," says Jay Shendure, a geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and a TR35 winner in 2006.
Last year, sequencing a genome was still a feat in itself, and much of the conference focused on the technical details--assessing accuracy and error rates and comparing one method to another. While these issues are still of central importance, sequencing a human genome has become routine enough to generate medically useful information. "Now we are able to do things automatically, so the biology starts to come out," says Paul Flicek, a bioinformaticist with the European Bioinformatics Institute and one of the conference organizers. |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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Complete Genomics announces the complete sequencing of 7 genomes, and plans to sequence as many as 10,000 in 2010. The company has brought the price to just $20,000 each for an order of eight or more, and just a mind-boggling $5,000 for an order of 1,000 or more:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23416/page1/
| Quote: | The company hasn't said how much this preliminary round of genomic sequencing cost, although last year it announced that it had sequenced a genome for $4,000. And CEO Clifford Reid says the company will soon start charging $20,000 per genome for an order of eight genomes or more, and $5,000 apiece for an order of 1,000 or more-with variable pricing in between. The sequencing technology involved is gearing up to run one genome per day per instrument, Reid says, with an accuracy that is comparable to the sequences published last year using technology developed by San Diego-based Illumina, which charged about $250,000 to sequence that genome.
Complete Genomics's customers include Duke University, in Durham, NC; Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Boston; the Institute for Systems Biology, in Seattle; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in Cambridge, MA. "I think this mainly matters because it is real," says Robert Cook-Deagan of Duke's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. "It's kind of amazing if they can do what they say."
Having one's complete genome sequenced is far more thorough than the scans done by companies such as 23andMe (also in Mountain View) and DeCodeMe, in Iceland. These companies offer direct-to-consumer testing of a person's DNA for between $399 and $985. But they test only about a million genetic markers out of the six billion nucleotides that reside inside human cells. |
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rffrydr
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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About time:
Researchers Fully Decode HIV Genome For the First Time
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/researchers-fully-decode-hiv-genome
| Quote: | While it may seem odd that scientists decoded the genomes of the guinea pig, the nine-banded armadillo and the Western European hedgehog before one of the world's most deadly diseases, one must note the byzantine complexity of the AIDS-causing virus.
Unlike those animals, and other viruses like influenza, the HIV genome is composed of RNA, not DNA. And unlike DNA, which orders itself into a neat, simple double helix, RNA twists into a wide range of intricate knots. Not only does that complicate sequencing the genome, but it also makes understanding the role of each gene more difficult, as the various twists and turns of RNA knots influences how and when different genes are expressed. For this study, the UNC researchers went beyond simply listing each component of the genome, and completely reconstructed the architecture of the RNA knots down to the finest resolution possible. |
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rffrydr
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:56 am Post subject: |
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Now, you can get your genome sequenced (whole-genome sequencing) done for $350,000 - significantly cheaper than what it cost to sequence James Watson's genome:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/21935/
| Quote: | | "Whole-genome sequencing is the endgame ... It will enable us to look at nearly 100% of your genetic code compared to the less than 0.02% currently available on SNP chips. This is the approach that most fully reveals what our genomes can tell us about ourselves." |
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