IP Genesis Debuts Novel DNA Sequencing Technology

NEW YORK, Jan. 28 - Start up bioinformatics company IP Genesis is introducing a new DNA sequencing and analysis technique developed at Argonne National Laboratory.

The technique was developed by former Argonne researcher Aleksandar Milosavljevic, who later founded IP Genesis.  Milosavljevic, a computer scientist and bioinformaticist, worked on the Human Genome Project at Argonne from 1992 to 1995.

The company has secured an exclusive license from Argonne to use the technique, Argonne said on Monday.

The technology, called Comparative Sequence Assembly, accelerates fragment assembly by comparing the unknown sequence to those from known and finished genomes.

"Fragments are put together by simultaneously maximizing mutual overlaps, plus their similarity to another reference nucleic acid sequence," explained Milosavljevic. "The more similarity there is, the larger the benefit in terms of the number of fragments you need."

Milosavljevic said that his method would accelerate cross-mammalian sequence assembly between 20 percent and 50 percent.

IP Genesis was formed one year ago and is based in Houston, Tex.

Milosavljevic said that he would be exploring licensing opportunities with a range of companies in the months to come.  IP Genesis may offer exclusive or nonexclusive licenses to the sequencing method, as well as consultant services to help companies implement this system.

Potential partners include bioinformatics companies, database providers, sequence assembly software providers, discovery companies and others, said Milosavljevic.