Grapefruit-sized DNA sequencer in development

With funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, researchers at Reveo, Inc. and the University of Washington are collaborating on developing a grapefruit-sized sequencer. It uses electronic and photonic effects rather than liquid chemistry and could potentially sequence an entire genome for pennies.

In 2002, Godfray recognized that “in 10 or 20 years time it will be simpler to take an individual organism and get enough sequence data to assign it to a “sequence cluster” (equivalent to species) than to key it down using traditional methods” (Godfray 2002 Nature 417:17). That future is getting closer.

Here is your sequencer, sir