There are 3.234 billion base pairs, or letters, in the human genome. In 1990, when the Human Genome Project was launched, it cost about $10 to read just one letter in the genome, an A, G, C, or T. The entire project took ten years, thousands of scientists, and cost a few billion dollars. And that was for one genome. Today, I can read an entire human genome of 25,000 genes in a few days for less than a hundred dollars on a candy bar–sized DNA sequencer called a MinION that I plug into my laptop. And that’s for a fairly complete readout of a human genome, plus the DNA methyl marks that tell you
...more
