Airbus and Boeing. Apple and Microsoft. Coca Cola and Pepsi. At his Seqonomics blog, Art Wuster points to these as examples of duopolies. He then asks: "How close the next-generation sequencing market … to being dominated by the Illumina and Life Technologies duopoly?"

While he notes Illumina has captured the largest share of the next-gen sequencing market to date, Life Tech is not so far behind — and other firms are beginning to come online.