Helicos High Speed Gene Sequencing

Learn how high speed gene sequencing works.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Wired.com
• Gene
• Sequencing
• Helicos
• Technology
• Science

[formallyknownasdave]

this seems like one of those mock commercials you see in those apocalyptic movies just before a bunch of monsters appear and kill everyone

Its awesome and scary at the same time.

[XooxerX]

That's friggen clever as hell! Kudos Helicos!

[ntp1789]

@jonahfox 100k at least

[19Tranc3r92]

Good music.

[MegaVldmr]

@theSweetmonster457 Using computer trying to find overlaps between sequenced fragments.

[theSweetmonster457]

how do they put the data together at the end?

[jonahfox]

Cool, I wonder how much it costs lol

[vldmr0tube]

even if error rate is 1% after first run, after 3 runs it's already 0.0001%!!!

So it really worth it considering speed of the method.

[Casshyr]

@vldmr0tube I guess the error rate is just too high such that you will need so perform so many additional runs in the end, it's just not worth it. And the technology is not exactly cheap either. That doesn't mean this won't happen tho, i'm sure single molecule sequencing will be the future someday, once they perfect the method further.

[vldmr0tube]

@Casshyr

You can just have additional runs to increase SNR if you are unsatisfied with the one you have...

[Casshyr]

@northerntropics Agree, but there is a review published in Nature about 1 year ago comparing accuracy between different sequencing methods, and Helicos has one of the lowest accuracy call. Of course it has its own advantages, but just saying that compare to other methods out there, it's one of the worst in terms of accuracy.

[northerntropics]

@montelka unincorporated nucleotides with the fluorescent marker in spots not tagged as targets would not be such a problem right? Software simply ignores them. Heck with a billion per run you can ignore some suspect signals too. Right?