Google Genomics can store your entire genome online for a mere $25 a year
Google's been working on its latest project for about a year and a half ago: it's service that will store entire copies of genome. This isn't something Google Drive can cope with - decoding DNA involves a lot of data. According to Technology Review, in raw data, one person's genome weighs in at around 100 gigabytes. The plan is house all that DNA data online, in big 'ole clouds where scientists will be able to run virtual experiments and collaborate with each other on bigger (hopefully disease-curing) projects. Google is battling against the likes of Amazon and Microsoft to store expansive medical data like this: the Mountain View company charges scientists and researchers $25 a year for storing a single human genome -- although you'll have to pay a little more to fiddle around with data.
"Our bird's eye view is that if I were to get lung cancer in the future, doctors are going to sequence my genome and my tumor's genome, and then query them against a database of 50 million other genomes," explained Deniz Kural, whose company, Seven Bridges, stores genome data with Amazon's cloud system. "The result will be 'Hey, here's the drug that will work best for you.' "
