8.7 years ago by
Boston, MA USA
One the one hand, a cheap genome will harden the views of many regarding data acquisition, patient rights, accessibility and patents. For example, many will express fear and be against any sequencing, while others will advocate the routine use of genome sequencing at various life stages, especially at birth and upon disease diagnosis. We know these positions now, but many more individuals will express themselves and in increasingly louder, provocative and often ill-informed language.
At this moment, we are transitioning from a point where the obstacle is at data acquisition (genome sequencing for all) to data interpretation as the obstacle to interpreting the health consequences of those data. Like a good experiment, many more questions will arise from the data than are answered by it and its immediate interpretation. We'll want to look at gene-gene (epistasis) and gene-environment interactions. This will necessitate some deep phenotyping. There will certainly be calls for deep expression profiling (mRNAs and microRNAs) and epigenetic data to be able to fully interpret the expression of the genome. In other words, the data deluge of whole genome data for all persons will just be the first wave.
Third, data storage and manipulation/analysis issues will grow. This, too, is nothing new, but may, among other things, draw big computer companies more into the genome camp. As electronic health records, full genome sequence data and preliminary results from genomic experiments gain wider acceptance, activity (and hopefully funding with it) to translate and integrate these important data will move to the forefront.
'More data!' :)
-> more work opportunities for bioinformaticians :-)