[Dailydave] The Source

[Katie M]

It's a matter of focus, and how soon we decide to do so for the purpose
described in the initial pondering.

The way genotyping is generally done is this:

0. Researcher chooses an expressed trait or disease for which they'd
like to locate the genes responsible.
1. Researcher gathers a population of several families that express the
trait or develop the disease with relative frequency.
2. Samples are gathered from both affected and unaffected family
members and sequenced, looking for patterns to narrow down the gene or
likely many genes responsible for the target trait/disease.
3. More work is done to analyze the patterns, because genes are
ultimately just blueprints for proteins. Proteins have different
functions in living cells. So differences in protein structure alter
their functions, causing or contributing to the expressed trait or
disease.

So if I were to guess, we could do it if we chose to inside of a
decade, but it would require a lot of focus.

Katie

Sent from my Windows Phone From: dan at geer.org
Sent: 11/1/2013 6:19 PM
To: Katie M
Cc: dailydave at lists.immunityinc.com
Subject: Re: [Dailydave] The Source

<skipping quoting your message>

Katie, please make a prediction of time-scale until something
of this sort would be possible.  How much lead time do we have?
Is a breakthrough conceivable, or is it a steady uphill grind?

Sequencing was once unimaginably hard; now it is dirt cheap and
growing incredibly fast.  And portable.  Give us some educated
guesses, please.

--dan