Nobel Laureate: The Future of DNA Sequencing Will Be in the Palm of Your Hand

James D. Watson, Andrew Berry and Kevin Davies, Time Magazine
Oct 12, 2017
In January 2014, the then-CEO of Illumina, Jay Flatley, caused a stir at a major healthcare conference in San Francisco when he announced that his company was about to make history by delivering “the $1,000 genome”. For the first time, scientists could piece together the complete sequence of an individual’s genetic code — the 3 billion letters of DNA that make up the human genome — for little more than the cost of a smartphone.
Flatley’s stunning proclamation capped a decade of extraordinary advances in DNA sequencing technology coupled with plummeting costs. The original Human Genome Project, which I helped launch in 1990, took ten years to prepare the first rough draft of a human genome, involved thousands of dedicated scientists worldwide and cost on the order of $2 billion. When I had my own personal genome sequenced in 2007 by Jonathan Rothberg’s company, 454 Life Sciences — one of a handful of “next-generation” DNA sequencing biotech companies — the price tag had reassuringly dropped to about $1 million. Now, Illumina’s new flagship instrument — the HiSeq X Ten — could sequence dozens of genomes in a few days for just $1,000 apiece.
 
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Last modified: Oct 13, 2017