Note that this chip isn't doing genome sequencing - it's looking for SNPs, i.e. a bunch of known single letter changes in the DNA. This chip chops up the DNA, runs high-speed PCR to amplify the segments, filters the DNA, and then uses a new electrochemical sensor to detect the SNPs.

There's considerably more information at http://www.diginfo.tv/v/13-0022-r-en.php

On the whole, this "announcement" doesn't really provide a lot of detail, and some of the scientific explanation is misleading (or just wrong). That doesn't mean the development isn't exciting - doing a PCR on a chip that size is pretty cool.

I'm curious what this will do to disrupt the efforts of companies offering tests using the current array of DNA sequencing technologies (which are probably mostly Illumina Hi-Seqs and MiSeqs).

This piece of equipment seems like it cuts out a lot of the pain of those technologies: massive data output, requirement of expensive compute resources, a team of bioinformaticians, etc.

"Listen punk, we have your DNA and we'll have the results in under an hour. Why don't you just come clean now and we can make this a lot easier on everyone."

What's the cost going to be like? Is it cheap enough that I can do DNA fingerprinting through SNP matching at home? If so it could be a fun project.

Man, those 90° traces are uuuu-gly!

Still pretty darn cool though.

One step closer to a portable midi-chlorian detector.