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Editorial
Scientific Director, UCL Genomics, Department of Molecular Haematology and Cancer Biology, UCL Institute of Child Health, 30, Guilford St London WC1N 1EH, UK
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The field of genomics is responsible for the most dramatic data explosion in the history of biology. Over the last 10 years we have run hundreds of thousands of microarrays, contributing billions of datapoints to bulging databases across the world. Recently, the development of ‘next-generation’, massively parallel sequencing platforms has escalated the rate of capture of DNA sequence to the point where leaders in the field have announced our arrival in the era of personal genomics. Illumina, suppliers of the Genome Analyser II next-generation sequencer, are already offering a service to provide individual genome sequences for under $50 000. With third-generation ‘single molecule’ sequencers on the horizon, the per base cost of