[anotherpaul]

I am speculating here but as it genomics data I assume it's information such as: gene count, epigenetic information (methylation, histones etc) Once you do 20k times a few post translational modifications you can come to a few columns quickly.

Usually this would be stored in a sparse long form though. So I might be wrong.

[hobs]

If you want to do that why not just do an EVA pattern or something else that can translate rows to columns?