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Asked by anon-292566 to Ross on 26 Apr 2021.
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Ross Low answered on 26 Apr 2021:
That is a very good question!
It very much depends on the size and complexity of the genome you are trying to assemble. humans have 2 copies of each gene but some organisms have more. Wheat has 6 copies and they can be very difficult to tell apart from each other.
Parasite genomes tend to be quite small and they are only a little bit complicated so the longest one took me just over a month to assemble, but it was quite a big one with 3 copies of each gene. When I say it took me a month, it took the supercomputer a month to assemble it 😉
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Comments
Ed commented on :
Sequencing the first human genome cost about 1 billion and took 13 years to complete; today it costs about £3,000 and takes just one to two days.