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Scaling in genome sequencing

My "wow" numbers for the week come from a talk about the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center.

Expansion rate of their data center: 646 GB/day

Note that this is the rate at which they are adding storage, not the rate at which they're adding data. They actually maintain their primary sequencing files, which are 2-3 terabytes a pop, for only a week. So this is just the storage they need to add to keep up with their increasing data collection rate.

Time to do a single sequencing pass on a human genome...

...using their Sanger machines: 14 days
...using their 454 machines: 11 hours
...using their Illumina machines: 1.3 hours

Time to do a single sequencing pass on an E. coli genome...

...using their Sanger machines: 30 minutes
...using their 454 machines: 1 minute
...using their Illumina machines: 7 seconds

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 19, 2009 12:47 PM.

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