Now every patient may be able to go for an affordable gene scan. A British company has developed a new technique.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies announced successful testing of a new technique which will be able to read DNA directly. According to Dr. Gordon Sanghera, Oxford’s chief executive, this will cut the cost down by eliminating the cost of expensive chemicals, equipments and laboratory need.

“You move from days to hours to get the same information, and the equipment required is a lot simpler,” Sanghera said.

Current scanners check the DNA sequence by using fluorescent chemical tags which attach to each of the four chemicals that create a “letter” in the DNA sequence. Such processes need sophisticated cameras and software to read the genes. The new system developed by Oxford works in a different way- it sends each letter through a microscopic, biologically engineered hole, or “nanopore” one at a time. When an electrical current passed across the hole, it reacts in a different way to the four different letters. This helps scientists to read the letters accurately.

The cost will come down drastically here. The Human Genome Project spent $300 million to complete map of the genetic code in 2003. The current cost is around $100,000, even though the federal government spending millions to DNA sequencing research to reduce the cost to $1,000 by 2014. According to Oxford its nanopore sequencing could be a contender for the $1,000 scan.

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