New DNA Analysis Method Drastically Cuts Time and Cost of Genome Sequencing
DNA genome sequencing has the potential to unlock a lot of secrets of our biology, but the process of DNA amplification -- making billions of molecular copies of a DNA strand in order to create a large enough sample to analyze -- takes a lot of time and money. So a Boston University team came up with a novel solution: avoid amplification altogether. Their new sequencing method analyzes DNA faster and more cheaply, from samples several orders of magnitude smaller than those required by traditional methods. Current DNA sequencing techniques require a sample that is both large in molecular size and short in length -- less than a thousand base pairs -- and that requires amplification of short segments of a sample. But amplification takes time and, like any rendering of a rendering, can produce imperfect copies. The Boston University team, along with collaborators from New York University and Bar-Ilan University,...