$100 might be a little questionable here (apparently Illumina has a history of making the most favorable possible assumptions about volume/amortization) but revisiting my original prediction from 7 years ago:
As part of my work for Luke, I looked into price projections for whole genome sequencing, as in not SNP genotyping, which I expect to pass the $100 mark by 2014. The summary is that I am confident whole-genome sequencing will be <$1000 by 2020, and slightly skeptical <$100 by 2020.
I was too pessimistic about SNP genotyping (it was actually more like $50 in 2014, I was completely unaware of UK Biobank at the time or its scale or savings), definitely right about ‘<$1000 by 2020’, and I think I will turn out to be somewhat wrong about WGS being <$100 by 2020: even if Illumina is fudging some numbers for early 2019 at $100, it’ll have almost a whole year to drop the cost a little more, and honestly, even if it’s actually $110 does it make a difference considering how many things you can use whole genomes for & general medical overhead? You can hardly get some prescription aspirin these days for $100...
Overall self-assessment: I was more right than I had any right to be in that set of predictions given I was using some simple extrapolating and adding some pessimism/mean-reversion. Not bad, past-self!
Veritas Genetics will be offering their MyGenome product (30x whole genome sequencing) normally $999, for $199 to the first 1000 customers, starting tomorrow, Monday, 9 AM ET.
Even allowing for promotional discounts, I’m still impressed. EDIT: Dante Labs too!
Thanks! I’ve been conflicted about which SNP service to use, and now I don’t have to decide. :) Do you know if there are any potential downsides to consenting to let Veritas use the data for research? Would you tick that box?
I am not sure you necessarily want to use Veritas/Dante Labs (Veritas might be sold out already based on their Twitter), as WGS reports are usually pretty raw and you won’t get all of the interpretive services somebody like 23andMe would provide. I don’t believe 23andMe or the other major services let you just upload sequencing data either, only download. Offhand, I’m not sure how easy it would be to even use Promethease (not that Promethease is very worthwhile, as most of their report is candidate-gene junk). Personally, I am holding off on getting a WGSes done. I don’t know what I would do with mine, and the price should keep getting lower.
Oh, I misunderstood the purpose of your comment and thought you were recommending people to take advantage of the sale. I knew it was going to sell out quickly so I made the order prior to posting my question. (I gave consent for research since it said that I could withdraw that consent at any time.)
It looks like Veritas offers VCF file download so it’s compatible with Promethease but the format it uses only gives 16,000 genotypes. Also apparently Veritas used to provide the full BAM raw data, but no longer does, which is disappointing, so I’ll probably cancel my order and take advantage of the Dante $199 sale instead which does offer BAM. Looks like sequencing.com lets you upload a BAM file and offers a bunch of apps to do different analyses on it.
No, I was mentioning the sales because they offer a measurement of what WGS costs end to end now—presumably Veritas/Dante or Nebula are offering at close to their marginal cost (as they aren’t big or wealthy enough to afford to give it away and WGSes aren’t exactly a repeat-customer business). As far as Dante goes, I have seen some complaints about very slow or inconsistent service; on IRC, one of us did a previous sale and their original spit didn’t work, so they sent him another tube and forgot the postage. Not sure if he’s gotten his WGS yet either.
I see. Given that I haven’t done a genotype yet, would you suggest that I go through with Dante anyway, or wait until the price comes down further? (Presumably it would definitely be worth doing at $100?)
Well, do you have anything in mind specifically to do with it? If you do, it may not be worthwhile to wait. But if you don’t have something which needs to be done with a WGS right now, you probably aren’t going to be struck with inspiration once you get your download either.
Consumer WGSes hit ~$1000 with Veritas in 2016. In 2018, Dante Labs began offering WGS at ~$600, with a sale of $350. And we now have a rumor that Illumina will announce a $100 genome in a few months (presumably in early 2019): https://twitter.com/coregenomics/status/1058790189752049664
$100 might be a little questionable here (apparently Illumina has a history of making the most favorable possible assumptions about volume/amortization) but revisiting my original prediction from 7 years ago:
I was too pessimistic about SNP genotyping (it was actually more like $50 in 2014, I was completely unaware of UK Biobank at the time or its scale or savings), definitely right about ‘<$1000 by 2020’, and I think I will turn out to be somewhat wrong about WGS being <$100 by 2020: even if Illumina is fudging some numbers for early 2019 at $100, it’ll have almost a whole year to drop the cost a little more, and honestly, even if it’s actually $110 does it make a difference considering how many things you can use whole genomes for & general medical overhead? You can hardly get some prescription aspirin these days for $100...
Overall self-assessment: I was more right than I had any right to be in that set of predictions given I was using some simple extrapolating and adding some pessimism/mean-reversion. Not bad, past-self!
Just got a Veritas-related email:
Even allowing for promotional discounts, I’m still impressed. EDIT: Dante Labs too!
Thanks! I’ve been conflicted about which SNP service to use, and now I don’t have to decide. :) Do you know if there are any potential downsides to consenting to let Veritas use the data for research? Would you tick that box?
Yes. In fact, I am already a PGP participant.
I am not sure you necessarily want to use Veritas/Dante Labs (Veritas might be sold out already based on their Twitter), as WGS reports are usually pretty raw and you won’t get all of the interpretive services somebody like 23andMe would provide. I don’t believe 23andMe or the other major services let you just upload sequencing data either, only download. Offhand, I’m not sure how easy it would be to even use Promethease (not that Promethease is very worthwhile, as most of their report is candidate-gene junk). Personally, I am holding off on getting a WGSes done. I don’t know what I would do with mine, and the price should keep getting lower.
Oh, I misunderstood the purpose of your comment and thought you were recommending people to take advantage of the sale. I knew it was going to sell out quickly so I made the order prior to posting my question. (I gave consent for research since it said that I could withdraw that consent at any time.)
It looks like Veritas offers VCF file download so it’s compatible with Promethease but the format it uses only gives 16,000 genotypes. Also apparently Veritas used to provide the full BAM raw data, but no longer does, which is disappointing, so I’ll probably cancel my order and take advantage of the Dante $199 sale instead which does offer BAM. Looks like sequencing.com lets you upload a BAM file and offers a bunch of apps to do different analyses on it.
No, I was mentioning the sales because they offer a measurement of what WGS costs end to end now—presumably Veritas/Dante or Nebula are offering at close to their marginal cost (as they aren’t big or wealthy enough to afford to give it away and WGSes aren’t exactly a repeat-customer business). As far as Dante goes, I have seen some complaints about very slow or inconsistent service; on IRC, one of us did a previous sale and their original spit didn’t work, so they sent him another tube and forgot the postage. Not sure if he’s gotten his WGS yet either.
I see. Given that I haven’t done a genotype yet, would you suggest that I go through with Dante anyway, or wait until the price comes down further? (Presumably it would definitely be worth doing at $100?)
Well, do you have anything in mind specifically to do with it? If you do, it may not be worthwhile to wait. But if you don’t have something which needs to be done with a WGS right now, you probably aren’t going to be struck with inspiration once you get your download either.