3 ms·

Why would sequencing follow Moore's law when it isn't really related to computing? Sequencing technology is limited by our knowledge of chemistry, physics, and

by tuvan 7y ago

Why would sequencing follow Moore's law when it isn't really related to computing? Sequencing technology is limited by our knowledge of chemistry, physics, and mechanical engineering to apply the concepts. None of which is doubling every 2 years. There are 3rd gen sequencing techs that provide much longer reads than previous tech like Illumina but they also get much higher rate of erroneous reads. Another point is current sequencing tech is enough for tasks that were just unfeasible to do couple of years ago. Such as HiC (Extracting 3D structure of chromosomes with sequencing) or more recent applications like DNA Microscopy, where you can construct a very high resolution visual image of a cell just by using sequencing. Our usage of genomic data isn't really limited by sequencing tech since DNA is such a complex structure that we don't even fully understand the data we currently have.

virusduck 7y ago
This is exactly right. The Moore's law slide is a cute comparison that has been used to try and demonstrate that sequencing volume has outpaced our computational ability in one context or another. Variously, it is used as commentary on computers' ability to keep up, our need for better storage , our lack of trained professionals, and so on. Dollars/Mb is not a super-meaningful statistic anyway. If you include quality/value (either as raw base confidence or the value of that base in the context of longer read lengths), the Dollar/Base/Value number has likely kept falling. It's just hard to quantify the "Value" as a number.
aaron695 7y ago
> Why would sequencing follow Moore's law It doesn't, the whole point is it was far faster. This is what it's rate of change was famous for. The rate of change is now so slow it's comparable to Moore's law. Being as 'slow' as Moore's law means it's effectively stopped. It's just a layperson point gene tech has stalled. Not sure why you don't want it cheaper, strange point. Having access to cheap tech even for vets and animal production would be interesting. Let alone human hobbiest or researchers, they don't have unlimited budgets. Read the article on Moneyball and cattle

by tuvan 7y ago

virusduck 7y ago

This is exactly right. The Moore's law slide is a cute comparison that has been used to try and demonstrate that sequencing volume has outpaced our computational ability in one context or another. Variously, it is used as commentary on computers' ability to keep up, our need for better storage , our lack of trained professionals, and so on. Dollars/Mb is not a super-meaningful statistic anyway. If you include quality/value (either as raw base confidence or the value of that base in the context of longer read lengths), the Dollar/Base/Value number has likely kept falling. It's just hard to quantify the "Value" as a number.

aaron695 7y ago

> Why would sequencing follow Moore's law It doesn't, the whole point is it was far faster. This is what it's rate of change was famous for. The rate of change is now so slow it's comparable to Moore's law. Being as 'slow' as Moore's law means it's effectively stopped. It's just a layperson point gene tech has stalled. Not sure why you don't want it cheaper, strange point. Having access to cheap tech even for vets and animal production would be interesting. Let alone human hobbiest or researchers, they don't have unlimited budgets. Read the article on Moneyball and cattle