We know of say a few thousand germ line genes which may relate to their potential for disorders, BRCA and HOX B 13 being two we have discussed recently.
The challenge will be to develop sophisticated testing for prognostic profiles. But this may be a chicken and egg issue. It does however present a threat to the gene testing companies out there, because now the value added is analyzing the complex genetic structure and saying something about it.
The article gives costs as:
The Illumina HiSeq 2500 will allow researchers to generate 120
gigabases of data—40X coverage, or repeated sequencing, of a single 3
gigabase human genome—in 27 hours, the company announced.
It is a significant increase in speed over the previous model, the
popular HiSeq2000 machine, which sequences up to 5 human genomes (about
600 gigabases of data) simultaneously over 10 days. But the snappy new
model comes with a hefty price tag of $740,000, Forbes reported.
The Life Technologies Ion Proton Sequencer, on the other hand, is
priced significantly lower at $149,000 and will sequence an entire human
genome with 20 to 30X coverage in a day for just $1,000, said company
spokesperson Mauricio Minotta. Illumina declined to disclose a cost per
genome for the HiSeq 2500.
Thus low costs may turn this into a PC type revolution allowing many people to develop APPS!
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