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Issue 1
1st
January 2012
C&I Magazine
C&I MagazineThe leading source of news and opinion in the arena of chemical technology
Cover Story
As always in science, traditional groupings of concepts are never sharply defined and are commonly present to support the teaching and the intellectual development of the subject
News
Neil Sinclair,
03/01/2012
Manufacturing recovery in Western Europe and the US has weakened and in some sectors stalled altogether, while rising unemployment and job insecurity is undermining consumer demand
Cath O'Driscoll,
03/01/2012
UK government targets on renewable energy are jeopardising energy security and lack the necessary back-up infrastructure to sustain energy generation when supplies of wind, wave, solar and other renewables run low
Features
Sean Milmo,
03/01/2012
A competition last year organised by the UK Chemical Industries Association (CIA), and sponsored by Ineos Group, asked schoolchildren to imagine what life would be like in 2050
Peter Atkins,
03/01/2012
As always in science, traditional groupings of concepts are never sharply defined and are commonly present to support the teaching and the intellectual development of the subject
Editor's Blog
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The cost of DNA sequencing has been falling rapidly ever since genetics pioneer Craig Venter famously decoded his own genome back in 2007 – at an estimated cost of $10m. Today’s technologies work mainly by tagging the sequence of DNA bases – A, G, C and T – with fluorescent markers and recording the various colours passing along a single DNA strand. But alternatives to these optical technologies promise to bring costs down well below the much targeted $1000 per genome. In the journal Nature Biotechnology (doi:10.1038/nbt.2147), for example, researchers this week report a step towards a ‘next generation’ sequencing technology achieved through the use of an enzyme to control the movement of DNA through nanopores in an artificial membrane.
Sequencing with nanopores, the researchers say, has the potential of rapidly reading long strands of DNA without the need for amplification by PCR (polymerase chain reaction), chemical labelling or optical instrumentation – a capability that will surely put genome sequencing more on track towards mainstream commercialisation.