Hacker News Reader

Super awesome. As a point of curiosity, when did this kind of complete sequencing capability get to the point where it could be turned around in under two months?

View on HN

Here is the timeline of sequencing costs:

https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA-Sequen...

The human genome is 3 Gbp, which is 100,000 times the size of the coronavirus at 30 kbp.

It's been a while. You can do real time sequencing now. E.g., here is a sequencing demo happening in a coffee shop in Africa. https://twitter.com/virology_chitra/status/12200656783272550... The device connected to the laptop via USB is the sequencer.

The company that makes that is Oxford Nanopore https://nanoporetech.com/products

This is amazing. I'm having to restrain the part of myself that loves buying gadgets. These not only look cool, from watching their videos and reading about them, they have an awesome function.

Suppose I had some of this equipment and a sick family member. Would it be possible for me to somehow isolate a virus or bacteria from the sick person's saliva or blood and then sequence the DNA/RNA and then use a catalog of genetic information to identify a likely match?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com