i was watching star trek: nemesis the other day, as beverly crusher analyzed the entire genetic code of picard's clone in a few moments. i was wondering how cool it would be if we could do that - it seems a first small step has been taken. apparently a machine the size of a photocopier can sequence 100 million letters in a few hours. current technology before this breakthough could do only 50,000 in the same time. pretty cool eh? wat are ur thoughts on this?

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070712134819.htm

Actually this is not that new. The technique (pyrosequencing) was published last year (or the year before) and actually there is already a thread about it

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27427

 

The disadvantages of the technique are shortly described there, too.

And just fyi the thing is called Genome Sequencer FlX (not flex), also the run takes about 8 hours. The price tag was around 10k $ per kit.

 

Though I am repeating myself:

these new sequencers are suitable to sequence human genomes (as a draft already exists) within a week, though the use for novel genomes is still limited.

Nonetheless, at the moment the use is still somewhat limited because for the most part we still do not really know what to do with the sequence. This will hopefully change with further genetic analyzes within the next decade(s) or so.

 

For mere assessment of identity other (PCR-based) techniques already exist and are in common use.