DNA Sequencing Caught in Deluge of Data

BGI churns out so much data that it often cannot transmit its results to customers or collaborators over the Internet or other communications lines because that would take weeks. Instead, it sends computer disks containing the data, via FedEx.

Analog solution in a digital age

“It sounds like an analog solution in a digital age,” conceded Sifei He, the head of cloud computing for BGI, formerly known as the Beijing Genomics Institute. Nevertheless for now, he said, there is no better way.

The field of genomics is caught in a data deluge. DNA sequencing is becoming faster and cheaper at a pace far outstripping Moore’s law, which describes the rate at which computing gets faster and cheaper.

The data challenges are as well creating opportunities

But the data challenges are as well creating opportunities. There is demand for people trained in bioinformatics, the convergence of biology and computing. Numerous bioinformatics companies, like SoftGenetics, DNAStar, DNAnexus and NextBio, have sprung up to offer software and services to help analyze the data. EMC, a maker of data storage equipment, has found life sciences a fertile market for products that handle large amounts of information. BGI is starting a journal, GigaScience, to publish data-heavy life science papers.

That is a decline by a factor of more than 800 over four years. By contrast, computing costs would have dropped by like as not a factor of four in that time span.

Researchers are increasingly turning to cloud computing so they do not have to buy so many of their own computers and disk drives.