Showing posts with label sequencers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sequencers. Show all posts

27 July 2008

The Church of Openness

In Digital Code of Life, I explained at length - some would say at excessive length - how the Human Genome Project was a key early demonstration of the transformative power of openness. Here's one of the key initiators of that project, George Church, who wants to open up genomics even more. Why? Because:

Exponentials don't just happen. In Church's work, they proceed from two axioms. The first is automation, the idea that by automating human tasks, letting a computer or a machine replicate a manual process, technology becomes faster, easier to use, and more popular. The second is openness, the notion that sharing technologies by distributing them as widely as possible with minimal restrictions on use encourages both the adoption and the impact of a technology.

And Church believes in openness so much, he's even applying to his sequencer:

In the past three years, more companies have joined the marketplace with their own instruments, all of them driving toward the same goal: speeding up the process of sequencing DNA and cutting the cost. Most of the second-generation machines are priced at around $500,000. This spring, Church's lab undercut them all with the Polonator G.007 — offered at the low, low price of $150,000. The instrument, designed and fine-tuned by Church and his team, is manufactured and sold by Danaher, an $11 billion scientific-equipment company. The Polonator is already sequencing DNA from the first 10 PGP volunteers. What's more, both the software and hardware in the Polonator are open source. In other words, any competitor is free to buy a Polonator for $150,000 and copy it. The result, Church hopes, will be akin to how IBM's open-architecture approach in the early '80s fueled the PC revolution.

04 February 2006

"I Am Not a Number - I Am a Free Man!"

Tagging objects with unique, artificial DNA sequences that act as a barcode is not new; but I had no idea that it had progressed to the point where it was almost routine, as in this collectibles tagging service. It works by marking the object with an invisible ink containing small quantities of a synthetic DNA tag.

Although the collectibles story mentions using lasers and fluorescence to authenticate the tag, a more scalable approach would be to read the DNA directly: that requires fast, cheap DNA sequencers, and there's plenty of those under development.

As the cost of DNA synthesis and sequencing plummets, so this kind of barcoding is likely to become common. It's easy to apply, does not disfigure the object as a conventional barcode does (to say nothing of an RFID chip), and so does not need to be removed when the customer takes the item home.

But there is a dangerous downside to this ingenious approach. It will make the idea of DNA tagging uncomfortably mundane. And once people are used to the practice in their daily lives, it's only a short step for companies and governments to move on to identifying people by some very special sequences of DNA - their own.

The big advantage is that you don't even need to apply the invisible ink: practically every cell in our body already has the DNA tag. That tag is unique (modulo the odd identical twin), and you can't change your underlying genomic sequence (local mutations aside). In effect, this DNA forms your very own permanent identification number - written in the quaternary digits A, C, G and T - that is ideal for key documents like passports, driving licences and health cards. What government could pass up the opportunity to adopt such a logical approach?

Moreover, because the number never changes, you leave behind in your life a continuous trail of DNA tags - in the form of discarded cells (hair, skin, saliva, blood) - that forms a complete record of where you went. Put another way, for any given event, governments will be able confidently to assign names to most of the people who were involved, as well as to innocent witnesses - sorting out which is which is merely a forensic detail - on the basis of the genomic calling-cards they inevitably leave behind.

So much for freedom, Number 6.