The Problem with Genomic Big Data

Our computational capabilities required to handle human genome data will rapidly exceed those of Twitter and YouTube. Computer scientists are realizing that they are not equipped with the growing flood of genomics. Almost 2 Billion human genomes would have been sequenced by the year 2025 according to a journal - PLoS Biology. The data-storage demands for such data could add up to around to 2-40 Exabyte (1 Exabyte is 1018 bytes).  The journal states that Genomic data would outstrip YouTube's projected annual storage needs of 1-2 Exabyte of video by 2025. Storage however would only be a small part of the problem. The computational requirements for acquisition, distribution and analysis of genomics data could be even more demanding. Genomics furthermore lack the standards for conversion of raw sequence data into processed data. Read more at: http://www.nature.com/news/genome-researchers-raise-alarm-over-big-data-1.17912