It's good news but it's not as great as many people used to think. Having a particular gene doesn't mean that it's actually turned on. Your heart and your hair

It's good news but it's not as great as many people used to think. Having a particular gene doesn't mean that it's actually turned on. Your heart and your hair cells have the exact same genome, but do vastly different things. I am not excited as I used to be about the promise of cheap genome sequencing by itself. It needs to be paired with lots of other data for it to have any use, except for determining phylogeny/ancestry. Even more exciting than this would be cheap DNA synthesis, allowing us to build and test complicated genetic circuits in fewer steps. The current methods usually rely on stitching together existing sequences, rather than creating what you need from scratch. The price of DNA sequencing has fallen much faster than the price of DNA synthesis. Here is a comparison of the cost of DNA sequencing vs synthesis: http://www.synthesis.cc/synthesis/2016/03/on_dna_and_transistors http://www.synthesis.cc/synthesis/2016/03/on_dna_and_transis.... It would be good to find more recent data though.