By Elie Dolgin

In 2004, officials at the US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) set an ambitious goal: to reduce the cost of sequencing an entire human genome by four orders of magnitude within a decade. At the time, shortly after the publication of the Human Genome Project, a new three-billion-base-pair genome sequence still cost more than $10 million. So the idea was to get the cost down to under $1,000 by 2014.

Thanks to next-generation sequencing, which relies on massive parallel analyses of millions of short nucleic acid fragments, whole genome sequences are already available for under $20,000 apiece. To lower the cost further, many researchers are now vying to develop the first $1,000 genome by refining their sequencing-by-synthesis methods or pursuing a range of newer, single-molecule, ‘third generation’ DNA sequencing technologies. (Click here to continue reading)