So while it took thirteen years and billions of dollars to sequence the first human genome, by 2007 the cost of performing the same process for a single individual had fallen to around \$1 million, a far steeper fall in the price curve than any other information technology As with the rice on the chessboard, the further progress went the more incredible its improvements became. This meant that by January 2015 sequencing an individual’s genome had fallen to \$1000 and two years later the biotech company Illumina unveiled a machine it expected to do the job for under \$100. Equally impressive as the improvements in price performance are how quickly the process takes: while it took thirteen years to map the first human genome, Illumina’s machine performs the same task in under an hour.
If all of this sounds dizzying, that’s because it should – since the turn of the millennium the falling cost of gene sequencing is even more astonishing than the exponential improvements of Moore ’s Law. While the performance of a computer chip per dollar is doubling every twenty-four months, the costs of sequencing a genome have fallen by a factor of between five and ten times a year. Even if that precipitous fall in price– performance slows down – perhaps aligning with trends elsewhere in computing for a further decade – sequencing a genome could cost as little as \$30 by the late 2020s. That alone would transform healthcare, although according to Raymond McCauley, who previously worked at Illumina, such a conclusion is unduly pessimistic. His view is that by 2022 sequencing a genome will cost as little as flushing a toilet. In other words, it’ll be too cheap to even think about.
Editing Destiny
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