Project Leaders:       
Marco Marra, Robert Holt, Steven Jones

Lead Institution:       
Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre

Technology Applications:   
Next generation sequencing, technology development

Research Funding Program:
New Technology Development

This project will capitalize on the capacity of next-generation sequencing devices and develop applications which will be of significance to a broad spectrum of biological and medical studies.

The genome of an organism represents its entire hereditary information stored in the form of a DNA code. Recent developments in DNA sequencing technologies are changing the way scientists collect and interpret genomic data. For example, the human genome project cost $3 billion and took about 15 years to complete. Amazingly, and only a short time after the completion of the human genome sequencing project, the latest technology advances are aimed at soon making the “$1000 genome” a possibility. The revolutionary advances represented by the latest technology are not only applicable to sequencing entire genomes, but also provide critical infrastructure for researchers to understand genetic-based diseases such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and mental illness, as well as current environmental issues such as bioremediation and forest pest infestations. Populations of microorganisms in soil or water samples, or the genomes of species of agricultural importance can also be sequenced. This type of information can be applied to more effective disease treatment, prevention strategies, or personalized drug therapies in the case of humans, and more effective pest control in agriculture or forestry, or safer methods to clean up oil contamination using naturally occurring microbes, to name only a few applications.

To lend some perspective to the time and cost savings involved with “next-generation sequencers,” these instruments can generate over 1 billion base pairs of sequence data every three days; whereas the current generation of devices generate only ~3,000,000 base pairs every three days. This difference is profound - one Illumina sequencing device has the potential to determine, in a single year, an amount of DNA sequence approximately equivalent to three times the total amount of sequence that had been generated worldwide using hundreds of machines up to January 2007. In addition to this remarkable increase in sequencing rate, the new machines are also 300 times more cost effective.

Related Links:
Funding Awarded > Tech Dev