What are the Costs of Researching Cures?

Summary: Utilizing automated means, medical engineers can manufacture strands used in DNA or RNA synthesis.

The process of researching the cure for a disease used to be more expensive than it is today. That’s because entire DNA molecules, rather than just strands, were manufactured and used for testing. This was highly inefficient. Most reactions need only a segment of DNA for synthesis. Since the 1970s, medical engineers have utilized automated machinery to create and replicate DNA segments.

How Many Base Pairs for $1?

Right now, the answer is probably somewhere between one and three base pairs. That’s because the cost for reading genomes is much higher than the cost of writing genomes, but the cost can lower raise depending on how many base pairs one needs to manufacture. As the tally goes higher, so too does the price.

Companies that manufacture oligos for RNA synthesis also have a limit to what they will guarantee. If you needed 600 base pairs for a project, you might not be able to acquire it so easily. This is because they will typically stitch smaller pieces together, as opposed to performing the extra sequencing.

There are also fees depending on what you want, exactly, out of siRNA. If you needed a higher concentration, for example, your costs would raise or lower accordingly.

The good news is that the costs of DNA sequencing are stabilizing, if not falling. This is great for the burgeoning world of DNA synthesis, which has many consumer applications. For example, reading genomes could help predict future diseases that may occur as a result of genetics.