Decoding a baby's genome in 26 hours [News]

In a full genome scan, machines record the sequence of the 3.2 billion "letters" that make up a person's DNA and look for the roughly 5 million variations that make that person unique. The plummeting cost of such scans is helping doctors find many new uses for them-and in the process causing a new conundrum. "Genetics will be the biggest big-data problem that ever existed," says van Rooyen. Others agree: A study in PLoS Biology predicted that within a decade the computation demands of genetic data will trump those of all other domains, including both astronomical research and YouTube.