Illumina claimed they can achieve the $1000 genome at the annual JP Morgan investor conference when they introduced their new sequencing instrument, the HiSeq X Ten. Ten is the magic number because you must buy ten, at $1 million/instrument, to have the opportunity for $1000 genomes. Illumina claims their $1000 cost includes sample prep and amortization costs. The folks at the AllSeq blog estimate that the total investment is really $72 million since it will take 72 genomes, collected over four years, to achieve the amortized costs of $1000 per genome.
Unfortunately the above estimates are based on getting data from samples that are sequenced only once. Therein lies the rub. According to Robasky and team, sequencing genomes with high accuracy requires that they be sequenced, minimally, in duplicate.
Read the full, original story: $1000 Genomes for $2000
