I haven't looked at the data yet, but I suspect the large data size is due to full sequencer output. Next-gen sequencing methods produce a LOT of noisy overlapp

I haven't looked at the data yet, but I suspect the large data size is due to full sequencer output. Next-gen sequencing methods produce a LOT of noisy overlapping data that can later be reduced to high quality contiguous sequences. When compressed relative to a reference sequence, a ~3.3Gbp human genome can be reduced to ~3.3MiB of data[1]. For more information about the methods currently being used, check out these videos from the WUSTL Genome Center: http://gep.wustl.edu/curriculum/course_materials_WU/introduction_to_genomics/nextgen_video_tour http://gep.wustl.edu/curriculum/course_materials_WU/introduc... 1. http://dhruvbird.com/genome_compression.pdf http://dhruvbird.com/genome_compression.pdf