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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2005-05 > 1115516968


From: Thomas Krahn <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] The Future of DNA Sequencing
Date: Sun, 08 May 2005 03:53:52 +0200
References: <LPBBIOAAMGMFKIJPLJBCOEFHDMAA.dclwilson@earthlink.net> <b797b41d67a398ea3f962e5634f8db5a@earthlink.net> <fef9eee405050716541c0a4248@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <fef9eee405050716541c0a4248@mail.gmail.com>


Helicos technology is based on the work of Stephen Quake, PhD, as
described in his paper published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. (The link on the Helicos Homepage seems to be
broken). I've found a paper on his technology in PNAS:

http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=153030

They use an enzymatic incorporation technology. The problem that they
still have to solve is to bring the FRET donor molecule in a proximate
position to the FRET acceptor molecule of the last base that is just
incorporated. Labeling the polymerase with the donor dye is certainly a
good idea, but it still has to be demonstrated in experiments.
Incorporation efficiency may also limit the read length.

However, for SNPs this could bring us some advance in technology, but I
still don't believe that the price for a whole genome will drop down to
$5000 with this technology, because you still have to run some kind of
DNA extraction and some kind of DNA enrichment in advance.


Thomas Krahn

John S Walden wrote:

> "When Helicos's commercial machine is released, says Lapidus, it will
> sequence the whole genome start to finish in three days and for a
> cost of $5,000."

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