NHGRI — DNA Sequencing Costs (Genome Sequencing Program)
$525
per genome · 2022
Timeline — what shaped the curve
12005-09454 pyrosequencing — Margulies et al. (Nature 437:376) published the 454 picolitre-plate pyrosequencer, the first next-generation platform — roughly 100x the throughput of capillary Sanger instruments.
22007-01Illumina/Solexa SBS — Solexa's sequencing-by-synthesis Genome Analyzer (Illumina acquired Solexa in 2007) brought gigabase-scale short reads, the workhorse chemistry behind most of this cost decline.
32008-01Cost breaks Moore's Law — From 2008 the cost per genome fell far faster than computing's Moore's Law as second-generation sequencing scaled — the steep drop from ~$9.4M (Jan 2007) to ~$233k (Jan 2009).
42014-01-14$1,000 genome — Illumina launched the HiSeq X Ten on 14 Jan 2014, the first platform marketed as breaking the $1,000-per-genome barrier for population-scale whole-genome sequencing.
52017-01-09NovaSeq 6000 — Illumina introduced the NovaSeq series in January 2017, pushing per-genome cost toward a few hundred dollars at production scale.
62022-09-29NovaSeq X / sub-$200 — Illumina announced the NovaSeq X Series on 29 Sep 2022, claiming a ~$200 genome at maximum scale — beyond the end of the NHGRI series shown here.
The most-cited chart in genomics: NHGRI's cost to generate one high-quality human whole genome (~30x), from ~$95M in Sept 2001 to ~$525 by May 2022 — a >180,000-fold drop. The famous cliff from 2008 is where second-generation sequencing made the cost fall far faster than computing's Moore's Law. NHGRI updates this dataset on its own (irregular) schedule; the curve is intentionally NOT forecast — cost has roughly plateaued since the $1,000-genome era and straight-line extrapolation would mislead.
How this is tracked
SourceNHGRI — DNA Sequencing Costs (Genome Sequencing Program)