DNA sequence increasingly low cost, the wall of 100 dollars brought down

Sequencing an entire genome now costs less than $ 100. To break down the wall, unthinkable just five years ago when chasing a price ten times higher, was the Chinese company BGI Group, reports the Mit magazine, which presented the record at the Advances meeting in Genome Biology and Technology in Florida. Just ten years ago an analysis of DNA cost around 50 thousand dollars, while today it takes about 600, a price mainly dictated by the reagents. The system developed by the company, which will cost up to a million dollars, uses a robotic arm and a network of reagents and analyzers that takes an entire room to work on a large scale. It will be offered to large research centers that study DNA mapping of large populations or tumors. "The priority for the system will be given to very large-scale projects - explains Rade Drmanac, head of the company's scientific division - of the order of millions of people". The technology was actually developed by a US company, Complete Genomics, acquired in 2012 by the Chinese company amid controversy precisely because of the risk that this type of innovation would benefit China in competing with the US. (HANDLE).