Let’s say an organism is successfully modified and seems to be performing a portion of it’s synthetically designed biological tasks. Several questions are raised: has the organism evolved, during replication, from it’s original design? Is the organism’s DNA actually the same as the desired engineered DNA? Is there some mistake in the new organism’s DNA which could be improved? If the organism doesn’t function properly, is it because of the designers’ mistake, or is it because of the random chance in nature?
These questions are usually answered by verifying the DNA of the organism — sequencing. Today, verifying the organism’s sequence in a normal lab is done by a long process of diffusing the DNA through a gel and taking a UV picture of the result. This is rather old (and annoying) technology. Yet DNA sequencing is difficult because working with DNA poses several big technical problems. What is the next generation technology for DNA sequencing which could improve this?
Here are some examples and some cool videos as well: