Three companies—Illumina; LifeTechnologies, which Thermo Fisher Scientific acquired this year; and Roche—have thus far owned the gene sequencing market. But competition is heating up.

Over the past year, the number of firms competing in the space rose by almost 10, nearly tripling the field, according to Frost & Sullivan. Mergers and acquisitions also mixed things up in 2014.

“In order to gain access to newer technologies, companies like Bio Rad and Roche acquired companies such as Genia and Gnubio, who had promising technology platforms based on nanopore sequencing,” says Divyaa Ravishankar, a senior life sciences industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan.