On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 16:07:33 +0000 (UTC), kev{at}hughe5.co.uk (Kevin
Hughes) wrote:

>Steve Schaffner  wrote in message
news:...
>
>> It would take at least a few months and would cost something like 
>> $20 million, assuming you can find a large sequencing center that
>> isn't busy doing other things.
>> 
>
>Thanks for the replies.
>
>I had a feeling the answer would be something like that.  That's a
>*little* out of my price range.  Sorry to show up my complete
>ignorance of the subject, but now I already have I'd be gratefull if
>someone could elaborate further:
>
>I assume that DNA testing for forensic or paternity test (etc)
>purposes doesn't cost $20m each time.  Is this because they're
>actually different sorts of tests?  Or because only a small
>(presumably particularly important) section is tested? Or some other
>reason...
>
>I assume that we all (humans, that is) have more-or-less identical DNA
>since we're all pretty similar, and I've heard that most of the
>genetic information in DNA is useless anyway, is this true? And if so,
>does that mean you could just get the more important parts done
>cheaper?
>
>I do appreciate I may be completely misunderstaning the concept, and
>sorry if I am ;-)
>

You originally asked about sequencing your entire genome.
That is quite expensive.  However, there are many ways to
extract a specific piece of DNA and do a sequence on that, with much
cheaper costs -- on the order of dollars to tens of dollars depending
on the difficulty of isolating the specific piece and the number of
tests that you have to spread the total equipment cost over.

Sequencing only the "important" parts is another story.  First, there
are an awful lot of parts we know are important -- some tens of
thousands of known suspected genes. Second, there is a lot more DNA
that is almost certainly important, but we are not sure just where it
is. Third, the techniques for cutting up DNA into small chunks is
totally unrelated to whether the pieces are important or not. Things
like legal "DNA tests" simply use a piece of DNA that is very
convenient and easy to extract and isolate and that shows significant
variation between people.  Whether the piece is at all "important" is
totally relevent.
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