DNA analysis /DNA as Destiny
DNA is the book of life. It’s also the book of death. In the future we’ll all be read cover to cover. Here’s what it’s like to take the world’s first top-to-bottom gene scan. By David Ewing Duncan I FEEL NAKED. EXPOSED. As if my skin, bone, muscle tissue, cells have all been peeled back, down to a tidy swirl of DNA. It’s the basic stuff of life, the billions of nucleotides that keep me breathing, walking, craving, and just being. Eight hours ago, I gave a few cells, swabbed from inside my cheek, to a team of geneticists. They’ve spent the day extracting DNA and checking it for dozens of hidden diseases. Eventually, I will be tested for hundreds more. They include, as I will discover, a nucleic time bomb ticking inside my chromosomes that might one day kill me. For now I remain blissfully ignorant, awaiting the results in an office at Sequenom, one of scores of biotech startups incubating in the canyons north of San Diego. I’m waiting to find out if I have a genetic proclivit...