A lovely idea, az.
Sequencing a genome costs about 3-4 cents per base pair these days. An average bacteria has several million base pairs (let's say 1.8 Mbp like
Haemophilus influenzae just for the sake of argument), so the cost of sequencing one bacteria is $5.4 million.
The Value of Complete Microbial Genome Sequencing (You Get What You Pay For)
J Bacteriol. 2002 December; 184(23): 6403-6405.
Each colony would have several billion bacteria (let's say 4 billion for the sake of argument), so the cost of sequencing just one petri dish would be $21,600,000,000,000,000. Double that for 2 petri dishes.
A bit cost prohibitive, wouldn't you say?
Here's a snippet from a proposed project just for comparison's sake.
To find rarer SNPs that occur at 1% frequency, genome leaders say, they need to sequence about 1000 genomes. The 3-year project, which will cost $30 million to $50 million, will take advantage of new technologies that have slashed the cost of sequencing.
International Team to Sequence 1000 Genomes
ScienceNOW 22 January 2008
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