© 2005 Prentice Hall Inc. / A Pearson Education Company / Upper Saddle River, New Jersey Progress in genome sequencing Human Genome Project 10 years to complete Billions of dollars Current sequencing technology $10-25 million to sequence a human genome Mammalian genomes sequenced in months Microbial genomes sequenced in weeks Massively parallel sequencing 25 million base pairs in 4 hours!
© 2005 Prentice Hall Inc. / A Pearson Education Company / Upper Saddle River, New Jersey Sample preparation Fragment DNA into short single strands Use “adaptor” sequences to attach DNA to micron-scale beads Encase beads in oil droplets containing PCR reagents Amplify bead DNA Load beads into picoliter wells From Figure 1 in Margulies, M. et al. (2005) “Genome sequencing in microfabricated high-density picolitre reactors” Nature 437: Figures 1 and 2 used by permission by Jonathan Rothberg.
© 2005 Prentice Hall Inc. / A Pearson Education Company / Upper Saddle River, New Jersey The instrument Load beads into slide containing 1.6 million picoliter wells Sequentially pass A, G, C, and T into picoliter wells Presence of a particular base emits light from individual well CCD reads emitted light from each picoliter well From Figure 2 in Margulies, M. et al. (2005) “Genome sequencing in microfabricated high-density picolitre reactors” Nature 437:
© 2005 Prentice Hall Inc. / A Pearson Education Company / Upper Saddle River, New Jersey Caveats Only reads short lengths of sequence bp Accuracy of individual reads is lower than conventional methods Though speed can compensate to some extent Can not read paired-ends Makes sequence assembly less efficient