DNA Sequencing Technology: On Track with the Law of Accelerating Returns

July 1st 2008- At the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the prominent genetics institute has sequenced its trillionth base pair of DNA. This number shows just how fast genome sequencing technology has advanced in recent times. The equipment at the Sanger Institute can sequence as many base pairs in two minutes as did every single research worldwide in the first five years of the Human Genome Project. Just as the Law of Accelerating Returns predicts, the techonology of underlying genomics research has improved exponentially every couple of years, resulting in the vast speeds for DNA sequencing seen today.

The Human Genome Project was estimated to cost $3 billion dollars to complete when it was first proposed. but in the time it took to actually complete the effort, the technological advancement of the equipment had increased so quickly that it actually cost closer to $300 million. By 2006, sequencing the human genome cost an estimated $2.6 million, and simply a year later, James Watson's genome was fully sequenced for less than $1 million. Due to the Law of Accelerating returns, it is hoped that the price tag will drop to $100,000 by 2009 and a mere $1,000 by 2014. Raw production of the sequencing machines is projected to increase from 150 gigabases per year (a human has 3 gigabases) to 5 terabases in 2008 and 10 terabases in 2009.