jukido
Joined: 31 Aug 2011
Posts: 207
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 Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:59 pm Post subject: You have to wonder what's going on in the DNA |
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You have to wonder what's going on in the DNA of Harvard genetics professor George Church.
What extra bit of code does he have that the rest of us don't? If genes tell the story of a person's life, then some altered sequence of 'A's, 'C's, 'G's and 'T's must be at play, because his brain works like almost no one else's.
About 30 years ago, Prof Church was one of a handful of people who dreamed up the idea of sequencing the entire human genome - every letter in the code that separates us from fruit flies as well as our parents. His lab was the first to come up with a machine to break that code, and he's been working to improve it ever since.
Once the first genome was sequenced, he pushed the idea that it wasn't enough to have one sequence, we needed everyone's. When people pointed to the nearly $3bn price tag for that first one, he built another machine.
Now, the cost is down to below $5,000 per genome, and Prof Church says we're quickly heading toward another 10- or 20-fold decrease in price - to roughly the cost of a blood test.
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