Showing posts with label sequencing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sequencing. Show all posts
1.25.2010
Illumina Sequencing MRSA
Illumina, one of the 3 major next-gen sequencing platforms on the market is back in the news with this article by MIT's Technology Review. The article explains the efforts made by the Sanger Institute to track and understand the evolution and spread of MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant form of Staphylococcus aureus by sequencing its genome using Illumina sequencers. Unfortunately, there was no link to any actually published work, nor did they mention what sequencer they were using (probably a 'Genome Analyzer II'), but I will poke around the web and try to dig up some more info. The article is very interesting, regardless.
8.31.2009
Lets get Sequenced!
After browsing the the websites of http://www.23andme.com/ and http://www.navigenics.com/, I am really amazed that there is a competitive, viable market for personal genotyping. These services (just two of a whole emerging online market) both offer what seems at first glance to be quality genotyping services, but I'll concentrate just on 23andme's product since it is much more affordable (ranging from $99 to $399) compared to navigenics ($999, expensive but seems more robust).
So what is personal genotyping? Why get it done? Well, first of all let me explain the difference between genotyping and sequencing. Genotyping is the process of identifing genetic variants within a genome, in this case using SNPs. This process is just finding a small fraction of regions in your DNA and comparing them to historical medical data. Now sequencing on the other hand is laying out all the A, T, G, C's for a large region or whole genome. For a more in depth but easy to follow tutorial on this I really recommend PBS Nova's flash shows (a little outdated though, but informative none the less). Sequencing is a lot more robust, expensive, and time consuming, but apparently, according to Ivan from scientificsolutions there is a new company out there that will sequence your whole genome for $5000.
The benefits of genotyping your own DNA is arguable. In fact, everything I have read seems pretty inconclusive one way or the other. Regardless, the ablitly to analyze your own DNA against ever-growing medical data of known mutations of certain genes would mean you can see, within reason, if you have a high probability of a developing a specific genetic condition. Of course, this is not a diagnosis, but may help you predict such diseases as Crohns Disease, Type II Diabetes, and BRCA Cancer Mutations (and over a hundred more, but some are pretty obvious without the testing).
The sites also offer you the ability to compare you data to other people, whether that be family data (but they warn you that you may find out your adopted, lol) or you can just compare against friends to see who is the most genetically superior!
UPDATE: here is a related article regarding why you may not ever want to get this done. Insurance companies could deny you based on a genetic predisposition to a certain disease!
So what is personal genotyping? Why get it done? Well, first of all let me explain the difference between genotyping and sequencing. Genotyping is the process of identifing genetic variants within a genome, in this case using SNPs. This process is just finding a small fraction of regions in your DNA and comparing them to historical medical data. Now sequencing on the other hand is laying out all the A, T, G, C's for a large region or whole genome. For a more in depth but easy to follow tutorial on this I really recommend PBS Nova's flash shows (a little outdated though, but informative none the less). Sequencing is a lot more robust, expensive, and time consuming, but apparently, according to Ivan from scientificsolutions there is a new company out there that will sequence your whole genome for $5000.
The benefits of genotyping your own DNA is arguable. In fact, everything I have read seems pretty inconclusive one way or the other. Regardless, the ablitly to analyze your own DNA against ever-growing medical data of known mutations of certain genes would mean you can see, within reason, if you have a high probability of a developing a specific genetic condition. Of course, this is not a diagnosis, but may help you predict such diseases as Crohns Disease, Type II Diabetes, and BRCA Cancer Mutations (and over a hundred more, but some are pretty obvious without the testing).
The sites also offer you the ability to compare you data to other people, whether that be family data (but they warn you that you may find out your adopted, lol) or you can just compare against friends to see who is the most genetically superior!
UPDATE: here is a related article regarding why you may not ever want to get this done. Insurance companies could deny you based on a genetic predisposition to a certain disease!
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