Abstract
The first attempt to wind down the Washington University Microarray Facility was made by Genome Sequencing Center in 2008. It was clear to most of us involved in the attempt that, with the advent of NGS, microarrays were headed the way of differential display PCR (remember that!?). The attempt failed, and 2010 was the busiest year yet for our microarray facility. Sequence remains a bit too expensive and complex for many to make the leap. In addition, because of the rarity of variants and the modest number of bases required to identify a locus, most sequence data is superfluous. Beyond that, as the actual cost of sequence continues to fall, so do the price of arrays, while the density of elements of the latter rises. It seems that until the advent of reagentless sequencing, it is unlikely that the actual cost of sequencing will be less than the cost of an array that covers the same loci. While sequencing technology will remain an important tool for discovery, over time most exons and biologically relevant variants will be captured in toto on low cost arrays. Hospital or contract labs will (indeed are already) use small, cheap arrays that capture disease relevant genes and variants.