The cost of sequencing a complete human genome has dropped in 2013 to an astounding low: $1000. Such technology improvements in DNA-sequencing technology (Illumina is the company behind it) are, for the first time in history, disproving Moore's Law (the computing industry's trend of doubling computer power every two years).
At the moment, or, as of Feb. 19, 2014, there is a striking
computational bottleneck - it costs a lot more
to computer analyze the results of a sequencing run than the cost of
the sequencing run itself. The sequencing run provides a code, your
genome, made up of just 4 letters, A,C,T,G, 3 billion of them. But,
without the analysis, the results are just a long string of
randomly-arranged A,C,T,G, or, meaningless code. Kudos to the E.McNally
scientific group who published a groundbreaking study today, aiming at eventually decreasing the cost of human whole genome sequence analysis to, drumroll... about $1000. #thebest2000dollarsiwilleverspend.
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