title: Big Data: Astronomical or Genomical?
abstract: Genomics is a Big Data science and is going to get much bigger, very soon, but it is not known whether the needs of genomics will exceed other Big Data domains. Projecting to the year 2025, we compared genomics with three other major generators of Big Data: astronomy, YouTube, and Twitter. Our estimates show that genomics is a "four-headed beast"--it is either on par with or the most demanding of the domains analyzed here in terms of data acquisition, storage, distribution, and analysis. We discuss aspects of new technologies that will need to be developed to rise up and meet the computational challenges that genomics poses for the near future. Now is the time for concerted, community-wide planning for the "genomical" challenges of the next decade.
authors.affiliation: Coordinated Science Laboratory and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Zachary D
authors.initials: ZD
authors.lastname: Stephens
authors.affiliation: Coordinated Science Laboratory and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Skylar Y
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Faraz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Faghri
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Roy H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.affiliation: Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology & Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Chengxiang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhai
authors.affiliation: School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Miles J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Efron
authors.affiliation: Coordinated Science Laboratory and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Ravishankar
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Iyer
authors.affiliation: Simons Center for Quantitative Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Schatz
authors.affiliation: Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology & Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Saurabh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sinha
authors.affiliation: Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, Department of Entomology, and Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Gene E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Robinson
mesh_terms: D001256:Astronomy / Q000639:trends; D023281:Genomics / Q000639:trends*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D061108:Social Media / Q000639:trends; D013223:Statistics as Topic