Next Generation Sequencing – A Few Fundamental Concepts

Image courtesy of {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacoseoaneperez/"}Paco Seone{/a} via Flickr

As I mentioned in my prior post, Sanger capillary sequencing is not going away anytime soon. Yet next-generation sequencing has made a huge mark in the world – growing from zero in 2005 to a USD $1 Billion market in 2012. And its growth is estimated by various sources to grow 20 to 25% every year for the next five years, approximately tripling in size from where we are now.

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Next-Generation Sequencing – its historical context

Photo of J. Craig Venter Inst. circa 2005 by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/"}jurvetson{/a} via Flickr.

Even though the history of next-generation sequencing is short (the 454 GS20 came out in 2005, the Solexa 1G in 2007, and the SOLiD 2 in 2008), there is a robust genomic revolution going on, and a fierce battle in the marketplace with plummeting costs and soaring throughput. Whether Moore’s Law is beat by some 2.5-fold or even faster, there is no question that we are in the middle of burgeoning growth, remarkable discovery, and new insights and discoveries just about every day.

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