Everyone who has read this blog more than once has seen the Moore’s Law slide below (at a meeting, online, in a book, in a TED talk…). Many times this has come from the NHGRI who have tracked sequencing costs for yonks. Their costs presented in these graphs are for production sequencing i.e. large-scale genome sequencing and include: reagents, instruments (amortised over 3 years), servicing (I think), labour and primary informatics.

It is clear to everyone that there was a precipitous drop from the introduction of the Solexa/Illumina (and to some extent SOLiD) technologies in 2006/2007. This was followed by close to 10 years of falling costs. However since 2015 the $1000 genome has stuck around and (ignoring recent announcements from Illumina, ONT and MGI) is what the NHGRI is still paying in 2019.

Why are we stuck with the $1000 genome? Answers below please…

 

You can grab the data here: Sequencing Costs 2019.