Comment Re:Sadly, the article makes no sense (Score 2, Interesting) 235
More importantly, since they've shown that they can apply this technique (it's not really specified, but I'm assuming it's whole genome sequencing) and applied it to one patient, there's nothing stopping them (except money) from applying this to other patients with the same condition. Maybe a different patient has 25,000 mutations, maybe another has 27,000, etc. Chances are these mutations are not all going to be affecting the same sequence positions in all the different patients. If they can find mutations that are more common than others or genes that are mutated more often than others, then they can perhaps discover new genes which, when mutated drive the development and progression of the tumor. If you can discover which genes are important you can perhaps design treatments for that.
That said, the title ought to be more like: "Scientists crack 'Entire Genetic Code' of one melanoma patient's tumor and one lung cancer patient's tumor. This is definitely a very impressive achievement in its own right, and the technology that has made this possible is pretty amazing, but it's a bit premature to say "we've cracked the genetic code of cancer" full stop.