Saturday 18 July 2009

Carlson Curve

I have written already about Moore's law, and its profound impact on society and science. However, there are other well known geometric progressions in technology, this paper is one example - Carlson, R. (2003). The Pace and Proliferation of Biological Technologies. In Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science Volume 1 No. 3.


"FACTORS DRIVING THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION

The development of powerful laboratory tools is enabling ever more sophisticated measurement of biology at the molecular level. Beyond its own experimental utility, every new measurement technique creates a new mode of interaction with biological systems. Moreover, new measurement techniques can swiftly become means to manipulate biological systems. Estimating the pace of improvement of representative technologies is one way to illustrate the rate at which our ability to interact with and manipulate biological systems is changing."


Here is Figure 1 from the paper.

FIG. 1. On this semi-log plot, DNA synthesis and sequencing productivity are both increasing at least as fast as Moore?s Law (upwards triangles). Each of the remaining points is the amount of DNA that can be processed by one person running multiple machines for one eight hour day, defined by the time required for preprocessing and sample handling on each instrument. Not included in these estimates is the time required for sequence analysis. For comparison, the approximate rate at which a single molecule of E. coli DNA Polymerase III replicates DNA is shown (dashed horizontal line), referenced to an eight-hour day.

Sample processing time and cycle time per run for instruments in production are based on the experience of the scientific staff of the Molecular Sciences Institute and on estimates provided by manufacturers. ABI synthesis and sequencing data and Intel transistor data courtesy of those corporations. Pyrosequencing data courtesy of Mostafa Ronaghi at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. GeneWriter data courtesy of Glen Evans, Egea Biosciences. Projections are based on instruments under development.