New Scientist -- WHEN the cost of sequencing a human genome gets down to the price of a family car, then the era of personalised genomics will truly be upon us. This was the prediction from James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, in an interview with New Scientist (20 October 2007, p 58) last year. Well, it’s getting close. Last week, Applied Biosystems of Foster City, California, announced that it had sequenced the genome of a Nigerian man at a cost of less than $60,000, excluding labour. “We are committed to pushing the limits of this technology,” says Shaf Yousaf of Applied Biosystems. “These prices will come down further in the next year or two.”
