The $1,000 genome won't do any good for science if researchers can't interpret it, says Adina Mangubat, CEO of Spiral Genetics, in Xconomy. While industry has focused most of its time and energy to creating better ways to sequence a genome, it has "largely ignored the computational power required to extract and analyze the genomic data in a timeframe that keeps it relevant," Mangubat adds. And most labs aren't prepared for all that data. Many have said the solution to this is, at least in part, cloud computing. "Unfortunately, as many researchers have discovered, the cloud is not as welcoming as its white fluffy exterior suggests," she says.
The real solution will only come when the industry shares best practices, collaborates to find the best direction to spend money in, "and supports continued aggressive development of bioinformatics software that works in a cloud environment," Mangubat says. "Without industry support and bioinformatics technology allowing for analysis in a day, lab managers, researchers and sequencing instrument companies are running headlong into a data disaster."