#9: Your Genome, Now Available for a (Relative) Discount

A new chapter of faster, cheaper personal genomics began in 2008, accompanied by a flurry of regulatory concerns and ethical alerts. In April researchers reported sequencing the entire genome of DNA pioneer James Watson, a project that took only two months and cost less than $1 million. It was just the second individual human genome ever fully sequenced. The first, in 2007, took about a year and cost roughly 60 times as much. Chris McLeod, president and CEO of 454 Life Sciences, which was involved in the Watson project, says his company’s newest sequencing instrument can now do one human genome in about a month for roughly $200,000.