“They literally throw a bucket overboard and bring it back up and take that water, with probably several thousand species of microbes, and they shotgun-sequence it and reconstruct what all the species were.”
“It's a shotgun approach. You put the microbes through a blender, and then sequence the fragments of DNA that are floating around. Then you use a lot of computing power to reconstruct the genomes of this collection of organisms.”
“What he [Venter] realized is that the DNA in microorganisms is about 1,000th the length of the human genome. Instead of 3 billion base pairs, it is more like a couple of million-so it is a thousand-times-simpler problem.”
“It's a shotgun approach. You put the microbes through a blender and sequence the fragments of DNA that are floating around. Then you use a lot of computing power to reconstruct the genomes of this collection of organisms.”
“This program is a terrific example of the blending of science and entertainment. It fits wonderfully with Calit2's mission of helping the public understand what research organizations like ours are doing and how it might impact their lives.”
