DNA Mapping
Reading the 3bn “base pairs” in human DNA — akin to letters, encoding a total of between 20,000 and 30,000 genes that are the “words” of genetics — is getting faster as companies find quicker ways to “read” entire stretches of DNA at a time, like reading a sentence in chunks rather than letter by letter.
The cost of sequencing an individual genome is thus falling exponentially — just as the cost of hard disk space or transistors on a chip did when computing took off.
The rapidly falling cost and time needed to map your DNA:
2003
$440M
13 years to map
2007
$10M
4 years
2008
$100K
4 weeks
2012
$100*
2 days
*Forecast