Faster and cheaper computing power and software has meant that decoding work on the human genome, which took months of painstaking study a decade ago, can now be done in hours.
As of October last year, the going rate for sequencing a genome was $6,618. Hardly a snip, but compare that to $7 million five years ago, and a staggering $95.3 million in 2001. Sequencing a single genome these days means analysing half a terabyte of data – very Big Data indeed.
Personal genomics is definitely a daunting new world of information for which there are as yet few meaningful applications and a minefield of ethical questions. What does it mean to have one of the genes that predispose for breast cancer? And might that affect someone’s ability to get health insurance?
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View the original article here: What Big Data can tell you about your genome – and why it matters
