New method of selecting DNA for resequencing accelerates discovery of subtle DNA ...(people and a great deal of money says D...)

Geneticists have found many different types of obvious gene mutations that are deleterious to health, explains Dr. Zwick, but more subtle variations, or variations located in parts of the genome where scientists rarely look, may also have negative consequences but are not so easily discovered.

Other methods for isolating and studying a particular region of the genome, such as PCR and BAC cloning (bacterial artificial chromosomes) are comparatively labor intensive, difficult for single laboratories to scale to large sections of the genome, and relatively expensive, says Dr. Zwick.

Whereas typical microarray technology measures gene expression, MGS is a novel use of microarrays for capturing specific genomic sequences. For the published study, a third type of microarray--a resequencing array--was used to determine the DNA sequence in the patient samples.

"The logic behind the resequencing chip is that you design the chip to have the identity of the base at every single site in a reference sequence," says Dr. Zwick. "You use the human genome reference sequence as a shell and you search for variation on the theme. This alternative new technology allows a regular-sized laboratory and single investigator to generate a great deal of data at a cost significantly less than what a sequencing center would charge," Dr. Zwick says.

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