Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

science. Eventually, everyone will have his or her personalized genome available on a CD-ROM. It will list all your approximately 25,000 genes; it will be your “owner’s manual.”
    Nobel laureate David Baltimore summed it up when he said, “ Biology is today an information science.”

NEAR TERM (PRESENT TO 2030)
    GENOMIC MEDICINE
    What is driving this remarkable explosion in medicine is, in part, the quantum theory and the computer revolution. The quantum theory has given us amazingly detailed models of how the atoms are arranged in each protein and DNA molecule. Atom for atom, we know how to build the molecules of life from scratch. And gene sequencing—which used to be a long, tedious, and expensive process—is all automated with robots now. Originally, it cost several million dollars to sequence all the genes in a single human body. It is so expensive and time-consuming that only a handful of people (including the scientists who perfected this technology) have had their genomes read. But within a few more years, this exotic technology may come to the average person.
    (I vividly recall keynoting a conference in the late 1990s in Frankfurt, Germany, about the future of medicine. I predicted that by 2020, personal genomes would be a real possibility, and that everyone might have a CD or chip with his or her genes described on it. But one participant became quite indignant. He rose and said that this dream was impossible. There were simply too many genes, and it would cost too much to offer personal genomes to the average person. The Human Genome Project had cost $3 billion; the cost to sequence one person’s genes could not possibly drop that much. Discussing the issue with him later, it gradually became clear what the problem was. He was thinking linearly. But Moore’s law was driving down the costs, making it possible to sequence DNA using robots, computers, and automatic machines. He failed to understand the profound impact of Moore’s law on biology. Looking back at that incident, I now realize that if there was a mistake in that prediction, it was in overestimating the time it would take to offer personal genomics.)
    For example, Stanford engineer Stephen R. Quake has perfected the latest development in gene sequencing. He has now driven down the cost to$50,000 and foresees the price plunging to $1,000 in the next few years. Scientists have long speculated that when the price of human gene sequencing drops to $1,000, this could open the floodgates to mass gene sequencing, so a large proportion of the human race may benefit from this technology. Within a few decades, the price of sequencing all your genes may cost less than $100, no more expensive than a standard blood test.
    (The key to this latest breakthrough is to take a shortcut. Quake compares a person’s DNA to DNA sequences that have already been done of others. He breaks up the human genome into units of DNA containing 32 bits of information. Then he has a computer program that compares these 32-bit fragments to the completed genomes of other people. Since any two humans are almost identical in their DNA, differing on average by less than .1 percent, this means that a computer can rapidly get a match among these 32-bit fragments.)
    Quake became the eighth person in the world to have his genome fully sequenced. He had a personal interest in this project as well, since he scanned his personal genome for evidence of heart disease. Unfortunately, his genome indicated that he inherited one version of a gene associated with heart disease. “ You have to have a strong stomach when you look at your own genome,” he lamented.
    I know that eerie feeling. I had my own genome partially scanned and placed on a CD-ROM for a BBC-TV/Discovery special that I hosted. A doctor extracted some blood from my arm; sent it to the laboratory at Vanderbilt University; and then, two weeks later, a CD-ROM came back in the mail, listing thousands of my genes. Holding this disk in my hands gave me a funny feeling, knowing that it contained a partial blueprint for my body. In principle, this disk could be used to create a reasonable copy of myself.
    But it also piqued my curiosity, since the secrets of my body were contained on that CD-ROM. For example, I could see if I had a particular gene that increased my chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease. I was concerned, since my mother died of Alzheimer’s. (Fortunately, I do not have the gene.)
    Also, four of my genes