Often human genetic studies (i.e. GWAS) are expensive. While having significant resources may be required for large population human genetics and genomics studies, I think major contributions may also be facilitated by thoughtful study design; recognizing and studying rare, extreme clinical cases; and thoughtful data analysis / interpretation.

Teamwork is extremely important. Expensive genetic research has been dominated by a top down, technology driven approach. Celebrity drives the teams. When this changes, the research will markedly improve. Brainstorming and creativity prosper when driven by bohemian and off-the-well-trodden path ideas. Great science is often doomed by a focus on celebrity and fashion. Remember, you are an artist. Act like one and you will prosper!

I believe too that handling a technology is not sufficent to make a scientist. At least, I hope it will never be a suffcient condition. In our lab, we never had much money for our research and we tried to be as original as possible to circumvent this issue. Yet, it's kind of a vicious circle, because we don't care that much about celebrity or major paper, and we try to do conduct our studies the best as we can, but we can't materialize all our ideas because of unsufficient fundings. We observed several times that our ideas were probably not too bad, because other teams could develop successful studies by applying the same ideas. You're right anyway, that science is rather a question of creativity, and that teamwork enables to enhance creativity and come up with good ideas.

Nice discussion. Sebastien develops the basic, important ideas that will lead to success in the "arms race".

So, the answer on:

"Is current genetic research only a matter of technology and money? "

Yes.

And the comment on:

"If, like me, you wonder what will be the role of academic researchers in a near fututre" is:

Try to do research on something new. Find new problems, find new answers and forget essentially about doing the same all over again with teams that are too big and huge machines that are too specialized and too expensive.

Another important consideration is, what can the genetics can tell you about the underlying processes? Sometimes just finding the mutant gene is nearly worthless without some system in which you can track down the cause-effect pathway that leads to the phenotype, and that often means jumping to other organisms or in vitro systems, where you have more control over the actual level of gene product expressed, the specific mutations introduced, and the cell types or developmental stages at which gene expression is disrupted. As the identification of mutations gets easier, and more accessible at a lower cost, it will get back to creativity and tenacious hard work as the important determinants of advancing the science.

Interesting discussion here. The question of the beginning is:

"Is current genetic research only a matter of technology and money? "

And I think my answer is no. For example the 1000 genome project. When you search for mutations which can result in a disease and find a mutation in a patient sample you now can fast look is this really a disease mutation or maybe only a SNP. So this is really nice!

But this is really really only a part of genetic research. Mostly Sanger sequencing is enough for most of the labs, they don't need big machines etc. And another big point is that the interpretation of the results, and this is the real research! What did the data tell us?

"Is current genetic research only a matter of technology and money? "

the question should be

"Is current research only a matter of technology and money? "

and the answer is

mostly YES

Returning to genetics:

costs are declining at a fast speed, so that the major costs are not on sequencing/genotyping, but on phenotyping (including collecting cases, developing knock out animals, cell cultures etc)

cheers

It is by nature. The whole system is created by God; we are discovering already created things by means of research (eg DNA RNA, RNAi, and enzyme). Research makes us to study the evolution created by god, hence the discovery provides job opportunity to the community. They gain more knowledge about the evolution. The demand for genetic research provides job opportunity. The technology helps to discovery new lines in genetic research not for the sake of money. Indeed money helps in the advancement of technology and helps to do research in a faster way.

Dear Dr. Sébastien Küry, Yes it is true that the current genetic research only a matter of technology and money. However, there may be some reasons like the applications of genetic algorithm may have such a root where uprooting and again developing fresh might be difficult. Or may be be a conclave where penetration is hard.