Sequencing Is Biology's Compute: Call for 1000x Cheaper Sequencing to Power Bio x AI
anshulkundaje · x · 2026-10-12
- Richard She argues biology's biggest data opportunity is driving sequencing costs down 10x–1000x. Technologically feasible, but Illumina's long monopoly stalled the frontier since cutting prices would cannibalize revenue.
- Core claim: "everything is a sequencing assay" — sequencing is biology's compute, and even automating grad student labor won't reach the data scale needed for Bio x AI. He suggests DARPA-style incentives.
- In the quoted thread, mkoeris counters that science faces an iterative search problem: huge latency between experiments, so reducing that latency matters more than raw speed.
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