sequencing system. And as Luke reported in October, Complete Genomics of Mountain View, CA, hopes to bring the cost of sequencing a genome down to $5,000 by providing a service-based approach instead of selling the machines.
What is particular significant, according to Lucier and others, is that the technology needed to sequence genes is rapidly advancing across a broad front, undergoing a kind of biotech version of Moore’s Law. The processing speed for gene sequencing is plummeting and “prices are coming down by orders of magnitude,” says Eric Mathur of Synthetic Genomics, a San Diego biofuels startup that Venter co-founded in 2005.
Mathur also was at the dockside party yesterday, along with microbiologist and Nobel laureate Hamilton O. Smith, a Synthetic Genomics co-founder who also serves with Venter as the company’s co-chief scientific officer.
Lucier says the effort at Life Technologies “is probably one of the most ambitious science projects we’ve ever undertaken.” Still, even with Venter’s help, the Carlsbad maker of laboratory tools and materials is now in a long-term race to advance gene-sequencing technology.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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