IBM Plans to Devise Faster, Less Expensive Sequencing Technology

IBM (Armonk, NY, USA) is in the process of slashing the cost of sequencing a genome, now focused on the US$1,000 mark, jumping into a leading position in the biotech revolution.

IBM already has a supercomputer project in position to model biologic processes. Now its combining its supercomputer capacity with its expertise in material science and semiconductors to create a new, much faster sequencing machine that can reduce the cost of mapping the human genome to only $100. Moreover, as scientists continue to systematically clarify the role of genetics in disease, individuals will be able to afford a thorough reading of their risk of disease while drug developers will be able to operate with a clearly devised map to disease targets.

"More and more of biology is becoming an information science, which is very much a business for IBM,” Ajay Royyuru, senior manager for IBM's computational biology center at its Thomas J. Watson Laboratory (Yorktown Heights, NY, USA), recently told the New York Times. Eight years ago sequencing the first genome consumed a billion dollars. The current cost is between $5,000 and $50,000, and rapidly declining.

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