Ion Proton

Biosyn

What do you guys think of the Ion Proton 1 developed by a chemical engineer named Jonathan Rothberg? It can supposedly sequence most of a human genome for around $1000 compared to the past where had it costed millions.

I don't recall quite clearly, but I think researchers at IBM are developing a sequencer that costs around $100 that can read the bases of DNA fragments that flow through holes on its surface.



P.S.
Could someone please provide me with more references? I might write an essay on the Ion Proton sequencer. Thanks!


Sauce:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21776081

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...genome-really/

Pythagorean

Here's the min-ion. Can do 150 million base pairs in 6 hours on a usb stick:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...-dna-sequencer

Biosyn

Impressive :)
$900
Is it one time use? There are over 2.9 billion base pairs in the human genome.

Thank you!

Ryan_m_b

IIRC it's stackable as well though I may be thinking of something else. It's about time nanopore sequencing started taking off, it's been "only five years away" for decades. What will be interesting is when it is cheap enough and reusable enough for ecologists to simply wander out into the field, spend a day collecting hundreds of samples from plants, soil, water, insects, animals etc then leave them all running overnight to sequence them.