Mobile DNA: Finding Treasure in Junk

28. The future of mobile DNA research

Genome-wide analysis of recent retrotransposition events

The work of Adam Ewing, a graduate student in my lab and a number of members of the Moran, Devine, Burns and Boeke labs points to one productive future line of research (Beck et al., 2010; Huang et al., 2010; Iskow et al., 2010; Ewing and Kazazian, 2010b). The beginnings of this line of research have been published in mid-2010. Next generation sequencing has led to the ability to obtain billions of nucleotide sequence at one time. Using one company’s technology (Solexa), as recently as 2008 these sequences were 35 nucleotides long. In 2009, they increased to 76 and then 100 nucleotides. In the near future, each read will likely provide 200 nucleotides ...