The hundred dollar genome

XGenomes promises to sequence the human genome in a couple of hours and for $100

Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+

A biology professor from Harvard has developed a new technology that reads the genome much faster than competitors do. He compares work to reading a book–word by word, not by syllables. And it's also ten times cheaper.

Genetics will become the basis of healthcare, and the main obstacle in the way of enthusiasts is the lack of a fast and cheap genetic test. This is the opinion of the founder, 52-year-old founder of XGenomes, Kalim Mir, who has studied the human genome all his professional life. This requires the technology of gene sequencing on the scale of the Earth's population, which does not yet exist, writes TechCrunch.

Over the past 19 years, the cost of genome sequencing has decreased significantly, largely due to the success of the Human Genome project, which took $1 billion to implement. Today, this procedure takes several days and costs about $1,000. But with XGenomes, Harvard Professor Mir, who worked with the famous George Church on a new sequencing technology, hopes to reduce costs by an order of magnitude.

The basis of XGenomes technology is optical scanning. Samples treated with reagents are excited by laser beams. Then scientists read the highlighted DNA segments and identify them.

This approach will eventually allow the complete genome to be sequenced in one or two hours and for just $100.

"We have developed a method of sequencing directly on DNA, in which we do not manipulate it, except for the opening of the double helix," explains the professor. – I like to think of the genome as a book. The genome has chapters, and these are chromosomes. Modern technology reads them letter by letter. We recognize words."

A new method of monomolecular fluorosequencing, created last year in the USA, allows you to sequence a protein as DNA and read millions of molecules simultaneously.

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