Scientists from Imperial College London are developing technology that could ultimately sequence a person’s genome in mere minutes, at a fraction of the cost of current commercial techniques.
The researchers have patented an early prototype technology that they believe could lead to an ultrafast commercial DNA sequencing tool within ten years. Their work is described in a study published this month in the journal Nano Letters and it is supported by the Wellcome Trust Translational Award and the Corrigan Foundation.
The research suggests that scientists could eventually sequence an entire genome in a single lab procedure, whereas at present it can only be sequenced after being broken into pieces in a highly complex and time-consuming process. Fast and inexpensive genome sequencing could allow ordinary people to unlock the secrets of their own DNA, revealing their personal susceptibility to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer. Medical professionals are already using genome sequencing to understand population-wide health issues and research ways to tailor individualised treatments or preventions.
Dr Joshua Edel, one of the authors on the study from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, said: “Compared with current technology, this device could lead to much cheaper sequencing: just a few dollars, compared with $1m to sequence an entire genome in 2007. We haven’t tried it on a whole genome yet but our initial experiments suggest that you could theoretically do a complete scan of the 3,165 million bases in the human genome within minutes, providing huge benefits for medical tests, or DNA profiles for police and security work. It should be significantly faster and more reliable, and would be easy to scale up to create a device with the capacity to read up to 10 million bases per second, versus the typical 10 bases per second you get with the present day single molecule real-time techniques.”
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Top tweets of 2010
Twitter has analyzed the 25 billion tweets sent in 2010 to derive the top 10 twitter trends of 2010, top news, top technology topics, and several other categories of tweets.
Top topics
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul
Top news:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. Haiti Earthquake
3. Pakistan Floods
4. Koreas Conflict
5. Chilean Miners Rescue
6. Chavez Tas Ponchao
7. Wikileaks Cablegate
8. Hurricane Earl
9. Prince Williams Engagement
10. World Aids Day
Top technology tweets:
1. Apple iPad
2. Google Android
3. Apple iOS
4. Apple iPhone
5. Call of Duty Black Ops
6. New Twitter
7. HTC
8. RockMelt
9. MacBook Air
10. Google Instant
Top topics
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul
Top news:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. Haiti Earthquake
3. Pakistan Floods
4. Koreas Conflict
5. Chilean Miners Rescue
6. Chavez Tas Ponchao
7. Wikileaks Cablegate
8. Hurricane Earl
9. Prince Williams Engagement
10. World Aids Day
Top technology tweets:
1. Apple iPad
2. Google Android
3. Apple iOS
4. Apple iPhone
5. Call of Duty Black Ops
6. New Twitter
7. HTC
8. RockMelt
9. MacBook Air
10. Google Instant
Monday, November 22, 2010
Amazon hits Hollywood
Amazon.com is getting into the movie business by opening Amazon Studios, with the goal of using the Internet to put fresh movies on the big screen.
The new Internet movie studio will allow writers to upload screenplays to its website, where the global Internet audience can read them and offer feedback, or producers/directors can use them to make test movies. The test movies, which must be at least 70 minutes in length, can also be uploaded.
Amazon Studios will also award monthly cash prizes to the top submissions of $100,000 for the best movie each month and $20,000 to the two best scripts. They’ll also be an annual award of $1 million for the best movie and $100,000 for the best script.
The new Internet movie studio will allow writers to upload screenplays to its website, where the global Internet audience can read them and offer feedback, or producers/directors can use them to make test movies. The test movies, which must be at least 70 minutes in length, can also be uploaded.
Amazon Studios will also award monthly cash prizes to the top submissions of $100,000 for the best movie each month and $20,000 to the two best scripts. They’ll also be an annual award of $1 million for the best movie and $100,000 for the best script.
Now I See You
Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have built a new type of prosthetic retina that enabled blind mice to see nearly normal images. It could someday restore detailed sight to the millions of people who’ve lost their vision to retinal disease.
They used optogenetics, a recently developed technique that infuses neurons with light-sensitive proteins from blue-green algae, causing them to fire when exposed to light.
The researchers used mice that were genetically engineered to express one of these proteins, channelrhodopsin, in their ganglion cells. Then, they presented the mice with an image that had been translated into a grid of 6,000 pulsing lights. Each light communicated with a single ganglion cell, and each pulse of light caused its corresponding cell to fire, thus transmitting the encoded image along to the brain.
In humans, such a setup would require a pair of high-tech spectacles, embedded in which would be a tiny camera, an encoder chip to translate images from the camera into the retinal code, and a miniature array of thousands of lights. When each light pulsed, it would trigger a channelrhodopsin-laden ganglion cell. Surgery would no longer be required to implant an electron array deep into the eye, although some form of gene therapy would be required in order for patients to express channelrhodopsin in their retinas.
They used optogenetics, a recently developed technique that infuses neurons with light-sensitive proteins from blue-green algae, causing them to fire when exposed to light.
The researchers used mice that were genetically engineered to express one of these proteins, channelrhodopsin, in their ganglion cells. Then, they presented the mice with an image that had been translated into a grid of 6,000 pulsing lights. Each light communicated with a single ganglion cell, and each pulse of light caused its corresponding cell to fire, thus transmitting the encoded image along to the brain.
In humans, such a setup would require a pair of high-tech spectacles, embedded in which would be a tiny camera, an encoder chip to translate images from the camera into the retinal code, and a miniature array of thousands of lights. When each light pulsed, it would trigger a channelrhodopsin-laden ganglion cell. Surgery would no longer be required to implant an electron array deep into the eye, although some form of gene therapy would be required in order for patients to express channelrhodopsin in their retinas.
Headphones Built Into Your Hoodie N other Tech Clothing
A phone built into the sleeve of a dress. Gloves that enable you to swipe a touchscreen on the ski slope. Solar-powered backpacks. Here are nine examples of apparel that blurs the line between clothing and tech gear.
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