Genomics Technology

Source: "Genomics: What Lies Within," The Economist, August 12, 2010.

I quote from the article on the hope for future hope for medical interventions taking patients genome into account through pharmacogenomics:

Pacific Biosciences, a Californian firm with a promising approach to whole-genome sequencing, is backed by such heavyweight investors as Blackstone Group and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. In a short time, it has raised more than $369m in financing. Complete Genomics, a local rival, has come up with a novel business model: it offers rapid sequencing as a centralised service, rather than selling sequencing machines. It filed to go public on July 30th.

In 2007 Knome charged $350,000 to sequence a human genome. Today it charges $40,000. Mr Conde predicts that by 2015 the price will have fallen below $1,000. Complete Genomics charges about $10,000 to sequence more than 90% of a genome. It too predicts that the cost will drop below $1,000 within five years.

One of the key results of the improving technology will be a great improvement in the efficiency with which scientists can study the genome of species. To date there have been some 180 species that have been sequenced. Even this has helped clarify the "tree of life" and evolutionary history. However, 1.4 million species have been described scientifically, and it is clear that there are many, many more species that have not been described; there are a lot of bugs out there, and probably a lot more microorganisms. One of my hopes is that advances in sequencing technology will eventually allow scientists to understand genome variability within species and between species. Such studies will probably show that many groups which we now think of as single species are in fact complexes of several similar species, as not too long ago bonobos and chimpanzees were thought to be the same species.

Eventually the Encyclopedia of Life may include links to DNA sequences for huge numbers of species and be the basis for a far better understanding of biodiversity. One hopes, in this International Year of Biodiversity, that we as a species will have found ways to protect biodiversity by that time. It would be a shame as well as a disaster to finally understand the diversity of life on this planet only after we had significantly diminished that diversity!