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Science & Tech.
Pradeep Kumar

11/07/21 13:00 PM IST

2020 Millennium Technology Prize

In news

The 2020 Millennium Technology Prize, has been awarded to Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman, “for their development of revolutionary DNA sequencing techniques.”

Their work
  • Their work is a perfect blend of science and innovation, and very apt as we have all heard a great deal about genome sequencing in the context of the ongoing pandemic.
  • The breakthrough idea of Balasubramanian and Klenerman was to sequence DNA (or RNA) using this process of strand synthesis.
  • They cleverly modified their ATGC bases so that each shone with a different colour.
  • When copied, the “coloured” copy of DNA could be deciphered from the colours alone, using miniature optical and electronic devices.
  • By the year 2020, Next Generation Sequencing technologies had pushed the price for sequencing your genome down to a thousand dollars – when this technology becomes prevalent in India, this sum should become a few thousands of rupees.
Shankar Balasubramanian
  • He was born in Chennai, and has lived in England for most of his life. After his PhD, he joined the Chemistry Department, Cambridge University. He teamed up with David Klenerman, recruited by the Department around the same time.
  • The initial aim was to build a microscope that could follow single molecules.
  • Of special interest to him was the molecular machinery that DNA uses to make copies of itself.
  • Somewhere in their discussions arose the germ of the idea for a new way to read the alphabet that make up DNA, and to thereby access the information stored in them.
  • DNA (or RNA, in some viruses), the genetic material of life forms, is made of four bases (A, T, G and C; with U replacing T in the case of RNA).

Source: The Hindu

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