This may be more than a month old: a strikingly pure example of the convergence play: nano, bio and info. Genome sequencing is decreasing in price, but the next generation prototypes depend upon complex instrumentation and suffer from the constraints embedded in their processes. A simpler and more effective process is nanopore genome sequencing:
For over a decade, researchers have been working on nanopore sequencing, which could eliminate these problems by directly reading off the sequence of long, unprocessed strands of DNA. The principle is to identify each base in the sequence as the molecule is threaded through a nanoscale hole (or nanopore) outfitted with a sensor.
Nanopore sequencing has been developing for a decade: a useful reminder of how long the road from pure research to commercial viability. The goal is to transfer genome sequencing into hospital labs, the next step towards making this capability a viable and permanent expectation of the patient.
