4 ms·
When George and Robi Mitra were working on polony sequencing [1], it seemed like a ridiculous idea that would never work or scale. I'm glad NIH and DOE weren't
by skosuri 9y ago
When George and Robi Mitra were working on polony sequencing [1], it seemed like a ridiculous idea that would never work or scale. I'm glad NIH and DOE weren't as shortsighted as me at the time. The efforts here and by others in the lab over the next decade set the stage for the next-generation sequencing revolution.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/27/24/e34/2902337/In-situ-localized-amplification-and-contact https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/27/24/e34/2902337/In-si...
- neuromantik8086 9y agoTo be fair, J. Craig Venter's use of shotgun sequencing was poo-pooed by the NIH, which provides another example where the maverick had merit. It's kind of a difficult position to be in as a funding agency- you want to fund all of the cool things, but you need to balance that with practicality, which leads to risk aversion. It'd be quite a different world if our federal budget were a bit different and everyone were awash with cash. :)
- dnautics 9y agoActually Craig didn't think it would work either (he's not the sharpest knife in the kitchen), and it was ham smith that convinced him that they should do it. Ham smith is legitimately smart. On one project he wrote a Fortran program to find promoter regions... This was in the 2010s.