Next Big Future says that Applied Biosystems has announced that the $10,000 complete human genome is now in reach, taking less than 2 weeks to sequence the whole shebang.

And have no fear–ABI is still on track for the not-so-illusive anymore $100 genome by 2012. Down from a starting price of $300 million, the human genome is getting right cheap–but what I want to know is what are we all going to do with it once we can carry around our genome on flash drive for a few hundred dollars?

Our entire genome isn’t all that interesting–it’s the differences between species and between individuals that are. I doubt that will be part of what we get for that bargain sequencing for the $100 genome in the future will be an understanding of all the SNPs and mutations that make me different from you and give me risk for diseases that you don’t have. Instead we’ll just get a pile of information, no analysis, and have no clue what any of it means–and the answer will truly be–not much.

Summer Johnson, PhD