Quasi-official Yuletide PGP Update
As Hsien observes, everyone’s blogging about their $1000 personal variomes…so I confess to feeling a little sheepish posting yet another breathless update about the PGP. On the other hand, it beats wrapping Christmas presents…
- The Church lab-invented, Danaher-manufactured Polonator — the high-speed sequencing platform that will, um, soon be used to sequence our 20,000 genes — is now available for purchase (hurry and and you can leave it under the tree…some assembly required…).
- The Affymetrix SNP chip has been done on most of the PGP-10. I know you’re all dying to know my relative risk for restless legs syndrome.
- The Church/Danaher team has put its hat in the ring for the X-Prize. This means the PGP-10 will almost certainly have their complete genomes sequenced in the next 1-2 years. Which means we won’t have to scratch that check for $350k. Which means more money left over to buy my kids bobblehead dolls. Yay!
- The PGP is also exploring the transcriptome. George reports that his lab has improved its protocol for converting skin-derived fibroblasts to pluripotent stem cells. For those who want to know why: “We have been doing allele-specific quantitative RNA sequencing assays, since we feel that this is complementary to sequencing the non-coding regions and in many ways preferable to standard RNA assays of tissues from individuals. This provides an assay for nearly all cis-elements (enhancers, promoters, splicing signals, RNA termination, poly-A sites, etc.).”
- In the next couple of months, I expect the PGP-10 will reconvene in Boston, at which time we will:
- receive our initial sequence data and help in interpreting it
- donate skin samples for stem cell studies
- donate saliva for microbiome sequencing (”Look, Ma, it’s my very own E. coli!”)
- complete phenotypic questionnaires
- learn more about the plans to scale up to 100,000
Things may be quiet here for a while (yes yes, what else is new?). For now, Nat, Frank and I would like to toast you with a wish for peace on earth and good will toward almost everyone…
I work as the Science Editor for the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (although this site and its content are my own).
In 2007 I became the fourth subject in Harvard geneticist George Church's Personal Genome Project. As the PGP moves forward, I am chronicling the dawn of personal genomics, that is, people obtaining their genomic information for whatever reason(s) and figuring out what to do with it. I am interested in the relevant technologies and especially the attendant privacy and other ethical/legal/social issues.
This blog may also discuss some of my non-genome interests or, to paraphrase Dwight Yoakam, "Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music, etc etc."
The header image comes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's multimedia performance piece, "Ferocious Beauty: Genome."
January 7th, 2008 at 7:04 am
[…] writes the “Quasi-official Yuletide PGP Update.” The PGP is the Personal Genome Project, which I have written about before. Lots of […]
February 10th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
The Polonator G.007 is in production now. Danaher Motion - Dover has bought quantities of long lead parts so even if a lab only wants one system, they can get the volume price. The price is $150K and it comes fully assembled, including a fluidics module. More details can be found at www.polonator.org. Based on current orders and production rate, the lead time to delivery is about 5 weeks.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:15 am
[…] Angrist posts frequently about his participation in the Personal Genome Project and about the rapid technological advances that will make personal […]