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@cschin
Last active August 29, 2015 14:23
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Sunday Day Dream: My Vision for A Quantum Pore DNA Sequencer
I currently work for PacBio as a bioinformatist developing some methods to handle single molecule data and genome assembly properly.
Recently, I feel I am so lacking of vision. I have spent most of my time helping to develop methods in hope that they will be useful for the scientific community to use PacBio data. While we were developing those methods, as far as I could tell, many of those ONT fans had zero vision about them. We openly revealed those methods for the benefit to the scientific community to understand the value of PacBio's and PacBio-like data. We naively assumed ONT would generate some great data with raw single molecule read accuracy > 96% as what Clive presented in 2012 AGBT. If so, those ONT fans would not need to use any of those methods we had developed. After a while, we find out that some of the visionary ONT fans are finally "inspired" to use some of our methods for processing some ONT data and publishing papers to show some values which some of those fan questioned about before. Without any new inspiration to me, I feel so dwarfed thinking how visionary the company was when they promised to build a world class bioinformatics center to develop bioinformatics method in Oxford back in 2011 ( https://www.genomeweb.com/informatics/oxford-nanopore-opens-new-bioinformatics-center-cambridge-will-expand-informatic).
Maybe it is just also from many other questionable scientific and business practices that trigger me to feel that I am in my mid-life crisis. I think one good way to get out of it is to learn to be a visionary man like @BioMickwatson. So, I start to think how I can start my own company to develop a quantum pore DNA sequencer soon.
Here is my vision: all sequencing and bioinformatics will be done with quantum computer with latest spintronics on a single graphane sheet. All you have to do is to put the graphane patch on the bottom of your Apple Watch, your genome sequence data will be transferred to the Cloud every 15 minutes (through HLTE, Hype-long-term evolution network, wireless throug hyperspace spectrum, of course). After analyzing with STP-WGAA (space-time-population whole-genome-assembly-association), the drug you need to keep your visionary view for the day will be on your office desk even before you get into your office in a Google self-driving car or through Elon Musk's Hyperloop. Not only that, proper p-value for keeping your visonary veiw against whatever null hypothesis will be calculated and send to journal editors and reviewers to justify certain words used in the conclusion section of a news-worthy paper. Or, better, it also automagically produces papers because they are news-wrothy as no scientific study is actullay needed to be done to get scientific resutls. (The best part is that it fixes my crappy English spelling and grammar in the process.) What a wonderful world!! The imagination is unlimited!! I will be retired in months after succefully hiring my CPO while many graduate students or postdocs will be figuring how to pipette into a graphene sheet or using a spintronics driving quantum computers in the years to come. (Did I say no pipetting nor bioinformatics needed?)
Life is too short. Now I feel inspired and visionary again. I should be hiring soon. First start with a CPO. What can be a more exciting job than a CPO!! Not surprisingly, my prototype already shows the p-value that this company will not be successful is less than 0.05. Join me! No resume of scientific research experience required. Experience for proper commercialization or production development undesirable. No one needs to write a product specification anyway. Rejection for sure if you try to make any scientific or business sense out of this. Also, if you already have public funding resoruce, our investors will prefer that you keep getting paid by that. High K-index impact guaranteed among cargo cult scientists' club.
Opinion mine. Writing in a personal computer and in personal time. All Facts.
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