Zoe McDougall from Oxford Nanopore points me to a press release from Illumina announcing a new era of celebrity genomics:> Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) today announced that it has sequenced the DNA of American actress Glenn Close, the first publicly named female to have her DNA sequenced to full coverage. The service was completed in Illumina's CLIA certified and CAP accredited laboratory utilizing Illumina's Genome Analyzer technology and following the established process shown at http://www.everygenome.com/. Ms. Close's DNA was sequenced to an average depth greater than 30 fold, providing information on SNP variation and allowing for the analysis of other structural characteristics of the genome such as insertions, deletions and rearrangements. Specifically, over 95% of the known genome was reported, including over 12 million genotype calls on previously documented SNPs. In addition, 379,000 SNPs previously not reported in any public database were found.
While there's nothing new about celebrity genomics, previous examples have largely been "scientific celebrities" (such as Jim Watson and Craig Venter) - so Close is the first genome with broader celebrity status, and also the first named individual without a Y chromosome to rack up her 6 billion base pairs. That's of negligible interest scientifically, but there's no doubt this will dramatically increase the public profile of whole genome sequencing.(Added in edit: I've just been reminded by Misha Angrist that technically Close isn't the first named female to be sequenced - a press release back in May 2008 announced the sequencing of Dutch geneticist Marjolein Kriek, although we're yet to see an actual publication of those data and the quality of the sequence is unclear.)Illumina launched its retail genome sequencing service (which requires a doctor's permission) back in June. It's not cheap - currently a whole genome will set you back a hefty $48,000 - but it's likely that prices will tumble this year as competition heats up from emerging sequencing provider Complete Genomics. Complete doesn't offer sequencing direct to customers, but it will partner with personal genomics companies such as Knome to offer its product to high-end consumers. I have a longer article about Complete in the works, but it's worth noting that based on its recent analysis of four complete genomes it seems to have an error profile comparable with - or even better than - Illumina's technology.Meanwhile, it looks like Illumina has bigger plans ahead for its own sequencing service:> Illumina intends to create a social community for the education and exchange of information among those who have had their genomes sequenced. As more information becomes available, participants will be in a position to mine their personal genome sequence data to understand their identity in ways that never have been possible.
It sounds as though Illumina is serious about investing in its sequencing service; that's going to make things tricky for the company, since it will then be in indirect competition with its own technology-selling arm. Exactly how it will resolve that internal conflict remains to be seen.But either way, this is good news for those of us looking forward to getting our own genomes sequenced: the hotter the competition, the sooner the price drops to the point where even academics like me can afford it.
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