Scientists for Fairfield-based General Electric are getting $1.3 million extra in federal funding to pursue research that will cut the time and expense of sequencing the human genome to a fraction of what it is today, GE says.
GE Global Research unit said today scientists in its biosciences lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., have been awarded a second round of funding from the National Institutes of Health, to continue research that could reduce the cost and time of sequencing of an entire human genome to less than $1,000, in under a day.
With current technology, the cost of sequencing is now estimated to be approximately $50,000 and the time of sequencing can take several weeks.
Faster, inexpensive DNA sequencing would increase the amount of genetic data that researchers can study to find sequences in humans underlying such common diseases as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and cancers.
GE scientists have invented and demonstrated an approach to sequencing that has the potential to significantly advance DNA sequencing technology.
GE says it will use the grant to build a prototype DNA sequencer and demonstrate GE’s sequencing technology.
A genome is the collection of a person’s DNA and is the blueprint that codes for the unique traits that define every individual. If you stretched the DNA of a single human from end to end, it would extend from Earth to Pluto and back again seven times, or 56 billion miles, GE said.
