I heard that in the future, only $ 100 of genes!

Text ｜ Xu Rui

Recently, a young company named Ultima Genomics stated at the genomic biological technology progress conference held by Olando in Orando in the United States that by adjusting existing technology, it can provide Human genome sequencing services.

According to "Science", at this meeting, several other companies also promised to provide faster and cheaper sequencing services.

From basic biology to virus, to studying human evolution, genome sequencing is essential. Clinicians hope to use it for early testing of cancer and other diseases, and biologists try to use genomics to study single cells.

Over the years, most genome sequencing can only rely on Illumina's device.

But this year, the key patent protection of Illumina sequencing technology is about to expire, which may change the game rules in the field of gene sequencing, and there will be more competition.

Gene sequencing will usher in a "change".

Most sequencing companies, including Illumina, who control the global sequencing market, depend on synthetic sequencing (SBS) technology.

This technology needs to be separated from the deciphering DNA into a single chain -usually cut into short fragments and install it in the sequencing flow slot.

Each single -chain segment is a template to guide complementary alkali bases to form a single chain.

During the sequencing process, each base will be allowed to pass through the flow tank channel. Because each alkali group is added to emit different light after modification, the camera can record its attached position, thereby determining the corresponding base identity on the original DNA chain.

The above steps are repeated until the new DNA chain assembly is completed.

Ultima simplified the above process by spraying billions of DNA particles onto the dessert plate size by spraying billions of DNA particles onto the dessert plate size.

When each round silicon wafer rotates, the nozzle above will gently spray alkali and other reagents, making it thin and evenly distributed on the entire silicon wafer, thereby reducing the amount of expensive materials required.

The silicon wafer is rotating under the camera like the CD of the playback, which also speeds up the imaging speed.

In the end, the neural network program quickly converts the imaging data into a gene sequence.

Ultima CEO GILAD Almology and colleagues' 4 pre -printed on BIORXIV at the end of May show the potential of the technology.

They and colleagues from the MIT Institute of Technology and colleagues from Harvard University used new instruments to sequenize more than 224 sequencing human genome, and their results were consistent with the previous results.

At the same time, other three studies also show that this technology can evaluate the influence of a single cell's expression library, mutation, and epigenetics (DNA chemical modification affecting gene activity).

However, some people have reservations about new technologies with low cost of Ultima. They said that Ultima technology sometimes missed the active gene, and the error rate was higher.

And in clinical practice, sometimes only one or several people genes, and no high -throughput sequencing is required.

In addition, the cost of $ 100 announced by Ultima only includes reagents, and does not include artificial and sequencing steps and costs of instruments. These prices have not been announced.

"China Science News" (2022-06-17 The first edition of the original title "$ 100 gene? New technology is expected to change the rules of the game"))

Edit | Zhao Lu

Capture | Guo Gang

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