As cheap as free?

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It now costs about $3000 to $5000 to sequence a human genome. That cost is 10,000x less than the same effort had required just 10 years ago. Obviously we can't get the technology to be much cheaper, right? The sequencing machinery itself is growing cheaper: as of last year, a decent next-generation sequencer could be purchased for $80,000 to $120,000 or so, down from half-million dollar models from just a few years ago. The limiting factor here may be how the machines are intended for research purposes. A well-funded lab can certainly afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single machine, to say nothing of the reagents required to actually get data out of it.

Ubiquitous DNA sequencing has the potential to upend nearly everything we know about personalized medicine, but only if it's not cost-prohibitive. Basic molecular biological techniques certainly have applications in clinical or diagnostic environments. Sequencing could really go beyond that and become relevant to everyday folks. It could just be a matter of having a streamlined, automated system, with samples sent elsewhere. A recent start-up called uBiome offers to characterize the microbiome of just about anything you'd like for less than $100. They aren't specific about how they got their costs so low, but I'm assuming they're just doing the usual 16S rRNA amplification and some quick next-gen sequencing. That's one way to create demand for incredibly cheap sequencing technologies.

Let's wax futurist about the potential of super-cheap, publicly-available nucleotide sequencing:

  • Breakfast cereal manufacturers can offer free microbiome sequencing in every box of Cap'n Bran Flakes to show how their product might contribute to a healthy gut.
  • Vending machines can offer genome screening on demand to screen for potential genetic maladies (but do people ever use those drugstore blood pressure screening machines? Are they secretly some kind of Scientologist apparatus?)
  • Speaking of drugstores, pharmacies could do quick screens for genetic predisposition to adverse drug reactions before they actually dispense said drugs.
  • Labs could spend money on more practical things, like this electronic ice bucket. Oh yeah. 

Virulence Factors is the punk band that never was*

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It seems like every time I hit up Google for a quick answer to a science question I find a new database. In this case, the question was "does the Vibrio pathogenicity island produce an infective phage particle on its own?" It's really just a question best answered by a review article rather than a database, but I found a nice map of the pathogenicity island in question. Very helpful, plus this VFDB site may be helpful in the future despite, sadly, appearing inactive since 2008.**

*Virulence Factor is apparently a band from Chicago. They're kind of Evanescence-metal. Unlike the above database, Virulence Factor remains active.

**Oh, wait, no! There's a new version of VFDB.

Pretty pictures

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No radiation, but it is diatomic
This is a scanning electron micrograph of a diatom, a single-celled organism and a type of phyoplankton. Diatoms are known for the varied appearance, specifically that of their silica-based outer walls, also known as frustules. This diatom isn't naturally red - that's just the false color - but it does naturally have that radiation-warning pattern.
The image is from Anne Weston of the  London Research Institute of Cancer Research UK and is a 2012 Wellcome Image Award winner.