Stanford bioengineering professor Stephen Quake has decoded his own genome for only $50,000. By comparison, the most recently sequenced human genome cost $250,000 to decode.
This is an exciting development. Quake points to the long-term potential for his technology in an article in today's New York Times:
"There are four commercial technologies, nothing is static and all the platforms are improving by a factor of two each year," he said. "We are about to see the floodgates opened and many human genomes sequenced."
He said the much-discussed goal of the $1,000 genome could be attained in two or three years. That is the cost, experts have long predicted, at which genome sequencing could start to become a routine part of medical practice.
Quake has made his genome available to researchers worldwide. His work is also discussed in this Inside Stanford Medicine story.
Photo by Dollar Bin.
