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Now a chip that decodes your DNA in no time!
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 23 December 2010, 22:06 IST
London: A commercial DNA sequencing tool's prototype has been patented by scientists at the Imperial College of London. The prototype technology is believed to give the present commercial technologies a run for their money.
As per the research, it is said that the technology will make possible for scientists to sequence an entire genome in a single procedure. Currently, the genome needs to be broken into pieces for sequencing, which a long and complex procedure.
If the prototype is turned into reality, many people would be able to know the secrets in their DNA, thereby revealing the early prognosis of diseases like cancer, diabetes or Alzheimer's. Says Joshua Edel, one of the authors of the study, "Compared with current technology, this device could lead to much cheaper sequencing. We haven't tried it on a whole genome yet but our initial experiments suggest that you could theoretically do a complete scan of the 3,165 million bases in the human genome within minutes, providing huge benefits."
The researchers have demonstrated that they can drive a DNA strand in fast pace through a nanopore (a tiny 50 nanometre (nm) hole) made in a silicon chip by using electrical charge. When the strand comes from the back of the chip, an electrode junction reads the coding sequence.
The details of the new technology have been published in the Nano Letters journal.
