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layer of the internet,” he says. “The merchants or enterprises can just enable the use of their APIs with a cryptocurrency payment.” It could also change how social media platforms make money: Users would pay fractions of a penny to use the sites rather than be subjected to advertisements or have their personal information scooped up. “We believe that this capability for companies like Facebook or Wikipedia helps them realize new revenue models,” Harmon says. Another developer, hearo.fm, is using Hedera Hashgraph for a music platform where songs could be downloaded and artists would get more of the money because it cuts out the middleman. “There’s more margin that can be paid directly to the artists as opposed to them getting squeezed,” he says. In early 2019, Hedera will announce the first members of a council who will handle governance for the platform. Council members can serve two three-year terms for a maximum of six years. “There’s nobody else in the market that has anything like that. It’s the most representative governance body of any platform,” Harmon says.
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Genome sequencing can also be used proactively, to find problems before they become serious. “You can really look at specific mutations that can predict an individual’s risk for a particular disease,” Weidanz says. The research can be used for any genetic-based disease, says Sheff. “Ultimately, the sequencing data that we generate can be used to better diagnose and provide better treatment options,” he says. The NTGC opened in March at UT Arlington, but it’s also a partnership with the University of North Texas Health Science Center and Texas A&M University. And now the NTGC is moving aggressively to get beyond academic research into clinical trials. “We want to move it to health care providers and get the technology out to patients and clinicians,” Weidanz says. “We also want to establish the North Texas region as an area for biotech companies that have an interest in genomic information. The dream would be that it’s a catalyst for promoting a bioeconomy for the North Texas region.”
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Leading the Way in Biometrics Two people walk into a doctor’s office with the same type of cancer. The doctor may be inclined to treat them with the same drugs, but those patients may respond in very different ways. Why? The answer lies in DNA. At the North Texas Genome Center (NTGC) at the University of Texas at Arlington, researchers are using multimillion dollar machines to sequence human DNA. “The genomic analysis can be somewhat challenging due to the fact that the human genome consists of around 3.3 billion letters strung together; each represents what we call a base or nucleotide,” says Kelly Sheff, director of laboratory operations at NTGC. A DNA sample could come from tissue, such as liver, spleen, or kidney, or from fluids, such as blood or saliva. From that work, the researchers are creating databases to inform solutions for difficult problems, says Jon Weidanz, founding director of NTGC. “We’re able to have databases with tens or hundreds of thousands of profiles,” he says. Going back to the cancer patients, though they have the same disease, their DNA profiles could be vastly different, and they may require different approaches to care. Once their tumor genomes are mapped, the possible outcomes for various types of treatment can be compared to thousands of others with similar variant profiles. That allows oncologists to understand why “this person is not responding to the new treatment, because a specific tumor gene has a certain mutation,” Weidanz says.
LAB TESTS: At the North Texas Genome Center in Arlington, scientists are unlocking DNA.