 |
| Local | National | World | Technology | Travel | Health | Oddities | Careers | Classifieds | Obituaries | Letters to the Editor | Editorials |
| More Links | tbayjobline | TbayWeddings | Play Games! | New! eVents Calendar | Advertise with Us | Contact Us |
|---|
| Other Links | Movie Times | Airport | Bus Schedule | Road Conditions | Library | Weather |
|---|
The production of the device is being funded by a three-year $465,000 grant from the National Science and Engineering Research Council announced Tuesday at ICR Discoveries in Thunder Bay. Genesis Genomics will be the commercial arm of the device once it‘s developed at the University of Western Ontario in London. That would involve the organization and management of the project as well as the option to commercialize the technology and marketing of it. Also involved with the project are the University of Guelph and Brigham Young University in Utah. Guelph‘s Dr. Robert Hanner said the device would be useful for practical applications in hospitals and at border crossings. For example, if a patient is brought into an emergency department suffering from suspected food poisoning, a small sample of their stomach contents would be entered into the device. The unit would access a satellite that has a DNA bar-code sequence stored in its data base. The identification of the contents would be relayed to the hand-held unit so doctors would be able to treat the patient. DNA is the material inside the nucleus of cells that carries genetic information. Hanner said the technology promises diverse commercial applications, with particular relevance to regulatory enforcement (agricultural pest identification) and quality assurance such as in the beef and seafood industries. Hanner said the technology will prove to be an asset. “We can take a piece of biomaterial that‘s unidentifiable by traditional means and sequence its bar code. “Then we‘d compare it to our reference library (of bar codes) and make an identification.” Genesis Genomics chief executive officer Bob Thayer said the portable device may be expensive when first developed and out of the price range of most people. “For a plasma television you used to pay $13,000, now they‘re available for $1,000,” he said. “It may initially be costly, but as it‘s mass produced, the whole idea would be to get that device to a level where it could be utilized by the consumer,” Thayer said. Top of Page |
|
|
September 2, 2010, 7:48 am |