The main factor for SNP technology has been an interest in the concept of “personalized medicine,” which involves treatment for the individual patient. The technology is not limited to that, but the majority of the millions of dollars expended on analyzer and chemical purchases we can safely say were expended with that motive in mind. Specifically what has boosted SNPs over other technologies is that it is a kind of 'shortcut' to genotyping. SNPs or single nucleotide polymorphism are the most common mutations. If they are common, and they are linked to a disease, then finding the SNP allows you to presage disease. It's a shortcut because if you are searching for the common base pair mutations instead of looking at everything in a sample, it's a more effective, focused, cheaper and more relevant way of linking a sample to disease prediction... at least in theory. The high cost of sequencing in the past, and relatively low throughput, have historically been two of the main reasons scientists were driven to look for SNP genotyping methods. The number of completely sequenced genomes in the GOLD database, 911 at the end of 2008, growing from just double-digits in 2002, is also indicative of the relevance of this technology, according to Kalorama's SNP Genotyping and Analysis Markets and the Future of Personalized Medicine. The more genomes that are mapped, the better you can make an argument for buying an analyzer.

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