Monday, July 21, 2014
Next-generation sequencing technologies have reduced the
time and cost to sequence whole genomes, but the computational time and
resources needed to analyze the resulting data remain a bottleneck. Edico
Genome Inc. is developing a processor that reduces the time to analyze genome
sequences to less than half an hour without sacrificing accuracy.
Next-generation sequencing generates large digital data
files comprising short segments of DNA. "What comes out of the sequencing
machine is a digital puzzle with all the pieces scrambled," said Edico
President and CEO Pieter van Rooyen. Currently, large clusters of computer
servers are needed to generate usable sequencing information by mapping these
DNA segments to a reference genome to put the puzzle pieces together.