Ion Torrent Chemistry

[paulszauter]

Nature 475, 348–352 (21 July 2011)

[Achillies11ify]

Don't forget that the core technology was not developed by Rothberg (Ion torrent), his company has a non-exclusive license from the true inventor Prof Chris Toumazou

[onroadcowboy]

There're two issues of this technology:

- The synthesis cycle: we can only add one kind of nucleotides at each cycle and therefore, the total number of cycles is increased.

- The error rate because of sequence by context: with repeated sequence of single nucleotide, the machine has to measure the signal strength, and with little difference in voltage, the error taken is certain.

[152czar]

holy shit this is pretty advanced nanotechnology

[DNAutics]

@152czar actually, it's not. Well, no more than photolithography that's been around for years.

[onroadcowboy]

Dear friend,

Please let me know how can the machine distinguish between nucleotides? Actually, the signal is the same - voltage isn't it?

[squeeg1985]

@onroadcowboy It is the same voltage (relatively), however the machine has reservoirs of each nucleotide and will flood the wells of the chip with one nucleotide at a time...

[nmolonia]

Simple question: why am I watching a commercial instead of reading about it in a scientific publication?