In 2003, the Human Genome Project announced an enormous scientific breakthrough. Scientists had sequenced the entire human DNA code—200 million base pairs. The project took 13 years and cost nearly $3 billion.
In 2013, the small machine pictured above can do the same thing in just 24 hours. And sequencing a single person’s DNA costs about one one-millionth of the price: Just $3,500.
With this kind of power at their fingertips, scientists may now be poised to make huge medical breakthroughs.
This summer, the New York Genome Center, a nonprofit research group, opened a $54-million high-tech facility in lower Manhattan for the purpose of helping DNA researchers from around the world collaborate.
The Center has 20 of these Illumina HiSeq 2500 DNA sequencing machines plus a host of other technology.
Within a year, the Center hopes to produce what they call “clinically actionable genomics”—the study of DNA in a way that can directly be used by doctors to treat disease. For example, by comparing the DNA of cancer cells among many different patients, researchers may discover ways to treat cancer that don’t have the often-terrible side effects of surgery or chemotherapy.
Of course, this revolution could also lead to a biopunk Gattaca-like future of designer babies and thorny ethical questions about how genomics ought to be used.
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