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Scoop.it!
The notion that police can identify a suspect based on the tiniest drop of blood or trace of tissue has long been a staple of TV dramas, but scientists at Harvard have now taken the idea a step further. Using just a single human cell, they can reproduce an individual’s entire genome.
The researchers developed a method — dubbed MALBAC, short for Multiple Annealing and Looping-based Amplification Cycles — that requires just one cell to reproduce an entire DNA molecule.
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Scoop.it!
Medical researchers expect that with whole genome sequencing, treatment will be tailored to an individual tumor’s mutations, with drugs, eventually, that hit several key aberrant genes at once.
What is important, the researchers say, is the genes that drive a cancer, not the tissue or organ — liver or brain, bone marrow, blood or colon — where the cancer originates.
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Imagine if DNA compilation was as easy to understand as Windows or iOS. Scientific study would no longer be necessary to engineer new combinations and just about anyone could drag and drop bits of genetic code into a workable sequence.
Amirav-Drory wants to create a graphic user interface to empower people in just this way.
His new software, Genome Compiler (free and available for download at www.genomecompiler.com), converts the various parts of a DNA sequence into easy-to-understand, and easily manipulable, icons.
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As reported by KurzweilAI.net, this technique could lead to more nimble cancer treatments and enhanced prenatal screening.