Flickr on DNA: BeadArray Gene Reading Panels

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted December 10, 2007 in DNA Lab Talk

Esther Dyson’s Flickr photostream is one of the few photo feeds I subscribe to because she’s all over the place participating in all sorts of amazingly smart events! Last week, she visited Illumina in San Diego.

The fascinating thing is how much the whole business of sequencing and reading genomes is a physical process, even though it is based on leading-edge science. On the one hand there are all the issues around millions of tiny beads, each of which is designed to detect a specific SNP (genetic variation); on the other, there’s the need to be absolutely, positively accurate in tracking a sample from arrival (with a unique but anonymous identifier) to the data that is read and analyzed at the end. Illumina does this by fanatical use of bar codes and automation; nothing is labeled or identified by a human. (Humans move things that are labeled, but machines identify each item at each step.)

Tags: genetics, genes, dna, illumina, arrays, snp, esther dyson

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