Machines Like Us

Two years ago, one of the fathers of modern genetics, the Nobel laureate James Watson, agreed to have his entire genome sequenced by the Connecticut-based 454 Life Sciences. Now it appears that he has changed his mind. This small company with big ideas has been at the forefront of the fabled effort known as the "$1,000 genome"—that is, a process to reduce the expense of sequencing a person's every G, T, A, and C from hundreds of thousands of dollars to a price similar to what an MRI scan costs.

Early in the project, Watson asked 454 to delete his results for the apoE gene associated with Alzheimer's disease. Now he may have more disease variants inked out to protect his and his sons' privacy.

Read full story in Technology Review.