DNA sequencing revolution

Craig Venter gives his opinion on the ongoing DNA sequencing revolution in this Nature article. And it is a revolution. The sequencing capacity in the terms of kilobases per machine per day has increased more than 50 000 times since the days of the HUGO project that produced the first draft of the human genome. A complete human genome cost just a few thousand dollars today and can be sequenced in a few hours. There are more than 3800 organisms completely sequenced (mostly viruses) and the big companies are outbidding each other to make the sequencing platform of tomorrow. To produce sequencing data is now a much faster and cheaper procedure than to analyse it even rudimentary, and even storage of the DNA sequence information is becoming an increasing problem.

There are two main conclusions to be drawn. One – which Venter isn’t late to point out – is that the pioneers and visionaries of the sequencing communities are doing a mighty fine job. The other is that close to all fields of biology and medicine are changing forever. There will simply be no avoiding the genomic perspective from now on. Examples that will be commonplace in ten years or so include
- Complete genomes of all clinically isolated pathogen strains and tumours.
- DNA identification of all ecological samples. Everything from microflora to plants and animals. Identification based on morphological characters will be accompanied by DNA phylogeny.
- Mutation background of the lab organisms for every experiment.
- Transcription maps of next to everything.
- Real-time population genetic data on single basepair scale.
- Rare biosphere sequencing

And that’s just the examples that are in the top of my head.