The Source of the Data Flood: Sequencing Technologies

Special Issue Ercim: Tackling Big Data in the Life SciencesWhere does this huge amount of data come from? What are the costs of producing it? The answers tothese questions lie in the impressive development of sequencing technologies, which have opened upmany research opportunities and challenges, some of which are described in this issue. DNAsequencing is the process of “reading” a DNA fragment (referred to as a “read”) and determining theexact order of DNA bases (the four possible nucleotides, that are Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, andThymine) that compose a given DNA strand. Research in biology and medicine has beenrevolutionised and accelerated by the advances of DNA and even RNA sequencing biotechnologies