IBM is building a nanoscale DNA sequencer that works by moving DNA through a ‘nanopore’ one nucleotide at a time. The concept appears functional in silico. The challenge is to regulate the speed the nucleotides pass through the tube. Fast enough to reach throughput objectives. Slow enough to discretely identify each A,G,C, or T.

If successful, the ‘DNA Transistor’ could improve throughput and reduce cost of genome-scale analysis to a cost of $100 to $1,000. In comparison, the Human Genome Project (HGP) cost $3 billion.

(See also: IBM: IBM Research Aims to Build Nanoscale DNA Sequencer to Help Drive Down Cost of Personalized Genetic Analysis)
(See also: BBC: DNA sequencing in a holey new way)

I was pleasantly surprised to read there are others that share my view regarding the current consolidation push into virtualized guest operating systems, largely built on VMware. A recent article by James Urquhart on Cnet, quotes a blog post by Chris Hoff from Cisco Systems as a thesis:

If I had a wish, it would be that VM’s end up being the short-term gap-filler they deserve to be and ultimately become a legacy technology so we can solve some of our real architectural issues the way they ought to be solved.

…The approach we’ve taken today is that the VMM/Hypervisor abstracts the hardware from the OS. The applications are still stuck on top of operating systems that don’t provide much in the way of any benefit given the emergence of development frameworks/languages such as J2EE, PHP, Ruby, .NET, etc. that were built around the notions of decoupled, distributed and mashable application “fabrics.”

Virtualization efforts are a stopgap measure to make up for the inadequacies of current operating systems, specifically Microsoft-based systems.

Cloud services offer a new opportunity to focus on application services, rather than hundreds of copies of superfluous infrastructure. We’re quickly approaching a situation where collections of services can be run on lean kernel guest environments built specifically for their purpose. Virtualized database appliance engines, light weight server web farms, etc.

Operating systems as we know them will need to change considerably or get out of the way. This could be an opportunity for Open Source projects to shine.

(See also: Cnet: Cloud computing and the big rethink, Part 1)
(See also: Cnet: Cloud computing and the big rethink, Part 2)
(See also: Cnet: Cloud computing and the big rethink, Part 3)
(See also: Cnet: Cloud computing and the big rethink, Part 4)
(See also: Cnet: Cloud computing and the big rethink, Part 5)