Mapping the individual — cheaply

April 25, 2008 | Source: The Guardian

By 2015, babies might have their entire DNA read at birth, as costs of sequencing plunge below $100.

The first full human-genome sequencing, completed in 2003, took 13 years and cost $437 million. James Watson’s 2008 sequencing, carried out by 454 Life Sciences, took only two months and cost about $1 million. Other companies, such as Illumina and Applied Biosystems, are relentlessly pushing the cost down further.

The rapidly falling cost and time needed to map your DNA:

  • 2003: $437,000,000, 13 years
  • 2007: $10,000,000, 4 years
  • 2008: $100,000, 4 weeks
  • 2012: $100, 2 days (forecast)

    See Also James Watson’s genome sequenced at high speed for under $1.5 million