If the problem is separating the mother's DNA from the baby's, what if the mother had her complete genome sequenced before she got pregnant? Before long the cost of sequencing somebody's complete DNA will drop well-below $1000, and most of us will have it done at some point as we grow up.
From the story, it's not clear if the baby's entire DNA is available in the mother's bloodstream, or just fragments of it. If it's just fragments, how do you know when you've captured the part of DNA, for example, that contains the genetic defect for Huntington's?
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Posted by rhodez
8th Jun
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What if we knew the mother's complete genome first?
Posted by zackers
7th Jun
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I agree that this article does not describe clearly how the method works. Obviously one can sequence (or haplotype targetted regions) of both parents independently, and presumably the fetal DNA from the mothers plasma--though what would be sequenced would be a mixture of the mothers + fetal DNA, and so this would only allow identification of which paternal alleles/haplotypes had been inherited by the fetus, not which maternal one--ie. it would remain ambiguous as far as I can see.
Posted by rhodez
8th Jun