Fig. 2

a The cost breakdown of next generation sequencing projects. The total cost of these projects is split into the cost of labor, reagents and supplies, instrument depreciation and maintenance, and indirect fees. b The exponential increase in the number of gigabytes per dollar in hard drive storage technology is due in part to the sequential introduction and improvement of three technologies. Data were obtained from http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte. c Exponential scaling in technological cost improvement is often the superposition of multiple S-curve trajectories of individual technologies. At the beginning of a technology’s life cycle, development costs keep cost reductions low. As the technology matures improvements in production are able to drive down per unit costs and establish an exponential regime. Eventually, the technology reaches maturity where technological limits are encountered and the cost improvements again slow down. GMR reading, Giant Magnetoresitive reading; MR reading, Magnetoresitive reading