Its one of those things - you have to start somewhere, and sequencing the DNA of individuals with unusual characteristics ( such as long lived people ) is an in

Its one of those things - you have to start somewhere, and sequencing the DNA of individuals with unusual characteristics ( such as long lived people ) is an interesting data set to have for future analysis and comparison. There are a number of projects which are in the process of getting thousands of genome sequences as you suggest, eg http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Biomedical-science/Funded-projects/Major-initiatives/WTDV029748.htm http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Biomedical-science/Funded-... . Its amazing that its only 10 years or so since the first nearly complete human genome sequence was released and that the original projects budget was a couple of billion dollars, whereas now it can apparently be done for four or five figures.