By Jack Uldrich
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
I speak to a great many student groups and I am often struck by
how few of them appreciate the difference between one million, one
billion and one trillion. (In the name of fairness, the same is
true of many adults). 
Perhaps, it is because the three figures are all large
numbers that most people don’t think there is an appreciable
difference. Perhaps, it is because the words – million, billion,
and trillion – the rhyme; or maybe it’s just because they’re
dumb—or have had poor teachers. I really don’t know.
One way I have tried to convey the difference between the
numbers is by explaining the figures in a different way. To
wit:
One million seconds was 12 days ago; One billion seconds was
roughly 30 years ago; One trillion seconds was approximately 30,000
years ago – 28,000 B.C.!
My point with the analogy is that one trillion of anything is a
really BIG number, and it is much, much
different than one billion. This analogy is important because on
January 17, 2006 the Wellcome Sanger Institute announced it had
archived it’s one billionth DNA sequence. It was an impressive
accomplishment.
Well, today, Wired magazine reported that
the prominent genetics institute sequenced its trillionth base of
DNA. This is a one thousand-fold
improvement in just over two years. (cont.)
In my most recent book, Jump the Curve, I asked my readers to
think of the first billion DNA sequences
like a book that could shed some light on how genetic information
might help deliver better health outcomes for all of society.
Today, we have an additional 1000 such “books.”
My broader point is that society is still in the early stages of
understanding all of this genetic information; but as researchers,
scientists and entrepreneurs continues to sequence an ever larger
amount of genetic information it is a reasonable to expect that
some of this information may just revolutionize how we diagnose,
treat and, ultimately, cure a wide range of diseases.
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