SEQ

The same year that Gilbert launched Genome Corp., an MIT-trained engineer named Kevin Ulmer launched a tiny start-up, simply called SEQ pronounced “seek”, based in the unheated basement of his house overlooking Cohasset Harbor on Boston’s south shore.

The $1,000 Genome Kevin Davies 2010

Gene patents typically claim something like an isolated DNA having the sequence described in SEQ ID #1.

Court Rejects Gene Patent - The Panda's Thumb 2010

“The very first business plan for SEQ talks about doing genomes at a price your medical insurance would reimburse,” he recalls.

The $1,000 Genome Kevin Davies 2010

To move to the all-important step of actually sequencing DNA, Oxford borrowed an idea originally championed by Kevin Ulmer at SEQ in the 1990s.

The $1,000 Genome Kevin Davies 2010

This is the same enzyme that Kevin Ulmer proposed to use more than a decade earlier as the centerpiece of his single-molecule sequencing company SEQ.

The $1,000 Genome Kevin Davies 2010

According to Ulmer, his original business plan for SEQ actually quoted the figure $1,200.

The $1,000 Genome Kevin Davies 2010

Since launching SEQ, the first single-molecule sequencing company, two decades earlier, Ulmer had studied and deconstructed every conceivable sequencing technology and had consulted for Helicos for nearly two years.

The $1,000 Genome Kevin Davies 2010

Gene patents typically claim something like an isolated DNA having the sequence described in SEQ ID #1.

Court Rejects Gene Patent - The Panda's Thumb 2010

If the newly released nucleotides could be trapped and identified, SEQ would have the makings of the first “next-generation” sequencing system.

The $1,000 Genome Kevin Davies 2010

Here, the claimed computer system is disclosed to be useful for identifying nucleic acids that are similar to SEQ ID NOs 9-1008 . . .

Archive 2008-02-01 Peter Zura 2008