Theranos, as I understand it, was promising blood testing of all sorts of biomarkers like blood glucose, and nothing to do with DNA. DNA sequencing is different from measuring concentration—at least in theory, you only need a single strand of DNA and you can then amplify that up arbitrary amounts (eg in PGD/embryo selection, you just suck off a cell or two from the young embryo and that’s enough to work with). If you were trying to measure the nanograms of DNA per microliter, that’s a bit different.
I don’t know anything about RNA sequencing, since it’s not relevant to anything I follow like GWASes.
Lets say I write a DNA chromosome that contains in a loop of [Promotor that gets activated by Testosterone] AUG ATU GUA TAU GUA TAU GUA TAU GUA TAU GUA TAU TAG
If I put that chromosome along with the enzymes that read DNA and write RNA into a solution, it will create the matching sequence in an amount that correlates with the amount of testosterone in the solution.
If you then read all the RNA in the solution you know how much of that sequence is there and can calculate the amount of testosterone.
In addition to measuring testosterone you can easily add 300 additional substances that you measure in parallel provided you can sequence your RNA cheap enough.
You will likely measure a reference value of a known substance as well.
If you actually want to understand how the genes do what they do it will be vital to be good at measuring how they affect the various hormones in the body.
The kind of technology that Theranos and other blood testing currently use is analog in the signals. RNA on the other hand allows for something like digital data that you can read out of a biological system when you put something in that system that can write RNA.
Theranos, as I understand it, was promising blood testing of all sorts of biomarkers like blood glucose, and nothing to do with DNA. DNA sequencing is different from measuring concentration—at least in theory, you only need a single strand of DNA and you can then amplify that up arbitrary amounts (eg in PGD/embryo selection, you just suck off a cell or two from the young embryo and that’s enough to work with). If you were trying to measure the nanograms of DNA per microliter, that’s a bit different.
I don’t know anything about RNA sequencing, since it’s not relevant to anything I follow like GWASes.
Lets say I write a DNA chromosome that contains in a loop of [Promotor that gets activated by Testosterone] AUG ATU GUA TAU GUA TAU GUA TAU GUA TAU GUA TAU TAG
If I put that chromosome along with the enzymes that read DNA and write RNA into a solution, it will create the matching sequence in an amount that correlates with the amount of testosterone in the solution.
If you then read all the RNA in the solution you know how much of that sequence is there and can calculate the amount of testosterone.
In addition to measuring testosterone you can easily add 300 additional substances that you measure in parallel provided you can sequence your RNA cheap enough.
You will likely measure a reference value of a known substance as well.
https://www.abmgood.com/RNA-Sequencing-Service.html suggest that Illumina machines can also be somehow used for RNA but I don’t know whether they are exactly the same machines.
If you actually want to understand how the genes do what they do it will be vital to be good at measuring how they affect the various hormones in the body.
The kind of technology that Theranos and other blood testing currently use is analog in the signals. RNA on the other hand allows for something like digital data that you can read out of a biological system when you put something in that system that can write RNA.