The cost of sequencing the human genome has fell in these last twenty years, from a billion $ (2.7 B$ actually) to around 1,000$. It is not just the cost of sequencing, it is also the time it takes for sequencing, 13 years for that first genome, a few days …
Read More »One baby – one genome
The cost of genome sequencing has plummeted and it is now reasonable to imagine that every new born child can get her genome sequenced at birth. Actually, it is not even about imagining it: it is time to do this. In UK the Government owned company Genomics England was set …
Read More »Aging clocks
We have always been fascinated by the fountain of youth and myths abound in many cultures. In spite none has been found so far, researchers have been, and are, at work to find ways to extend our life span, in the last decade trying to leverage on the possibility of …
Read More »From 13 years to 7h 18′: DNA Sequencing
I still remember the announcement of the first human DNA sequencing. It took thousands of scientists working for 13 years to accomplish that feat. And we were amazed! It didn’t come cheap:2.7 billion $. By 2014 genome sequencing broke the 1,000$ barrier. 2.7 million times cheaper. Now a new world …
Read More »Post-Pandemic Scenarios – LI – Synthetic Biology 6
From Genome Sequencing to Artificial Human Genome The progress in genome sequencing has been so significant that in 20 years we have moved from a billion $ endeavour to obtain the first genome sequence to a mass market offering of sequencing. There is still quite a bit of confusion on …
Read More »The pervasive impact of Biotech – I
The World Economic Forum has addressed several times in the last few years the area of biotech and has recently published an infographic highlighting the variety of impacts in several areas. Indeed the convergence of processing power, big data, artificial intelligence makes possible to open new doors into the “carbon” …
Read More »Megatrends for this decade – IV
3. Increased lifespan Humankind lifespan has been stable, around 30 years was life expectancy for most part of the recorded history, probably less in the hundreds of thousands of years we have no written record. This relatively short life span didn’t mean that a few people couldn’t live longer, we …
Read More »Lights and Shadows of Covid-19 on Digital Transformation – X
4. In addition to the previous questions, any other comments? The fight against COVID-19 is being fought on several directions: – decreasing the probability of contagion, usually through social distancing and isolation of potential foci of infection. Technology can help through sensing distance (Bluetooth based apps), data analytics (tracing of …
Read More »The many faces of Digital Transformation – Societal Scenarios XI
Healthy life extension The dream of eternal youth goes back as far as we can see into the past. In reality, most of homo sapiens sapiens life span has been below 30 years. There have been exception of course and if we consider the early death in infancy and remove …
Read More »Crowdsourcing/crowdfunding digital transformation in Healthcare
As I often pointed out computers and data are an integral component of the digital transformation but at the same time it is not true that by adding more and more crunching data capabilities to a business you are digitally transforming it. A clear example is the Healthcare area. Nowadays …
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