Amazon, Google Want To Store Your DNA On Cloud

After controlling almost every aspect of your life, Amazon and Google are now vying with each other to own your DNA.

Now an estimated $100 million to $300 million business globally, the cloud genomics market is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2018. By that time, the entire cloud market should have $50 billion to $75 billion in annual revenue, up from about $30 billion now. It is not surprising, thus, that both Amazon and Google want a piece of it.

Thanks to the revolution in the healthcare industry, patients are treated based on their DNA profile. Researchers, scientists, drug manufactures and universities, rely on Amazon Web Services or Google Genomics to store genomics data required to understand how certain genetic profiles respond to different treatment.

At present, Google is charging $3 to $5 per month for its service, while Amazon charges $4 to $5 per month. The companies also charge for computing data and data transfer, when scientists use the analytical software.

“The cloud is the entire future of this field,” Craig Venter, who led a private effort to sequence the human genome in the 1990s, told Reuters.

Both Google and Amazon are hosting well-known genomics datasets for free. Both service providers offer a range of analytical tools that are designed to search for promising DNA segments that could lead to the creation of a new drug or therapy.

“Data from the “1000 Genomes Project”, an international public-private effort that identified genetic variations found in at least 1 percent of humans, reside at both Amazon and Google without charge,” said Kathy Cravedi of the US National Institutes of Health, one of the project’s sponsors.

Both the firms have won projects from different companies to store and analyze genomes data. Google won a project from the Autism Speaks foundation so that it can detect the genetic basis of autism among 10,000 affected children. Amazon won a project from the Multiple Pyeloma Foundation to collect complete-genome sequences and other data from 1,000 patients to identify new drug targets.

Human genome sequences require an enormous amount of storage; a single person’s raw genome data is 100 gigabytes in size. Since the current storage options are not as secure and cost-effective as the cloud services, scientists and healthcare companies are relying on Amazon and Google.

Though the experts on DNA and data say without access to the cloud (data or software that physically resides in a server, is accessible via the internet, and allows users to access it without downloading it to their own computer), modern genomics would grind to a halt, the reality is that an individual’s genome is very personal, and access to it could mean scientists can actually make a clone of you apart from revealing your predisposition to certain diseases.

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