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At Human Longevity Inc. (HLI) in La Jolla, California, more than two dozen machines work around the clock, sequencing one human genome every 15 minutes at a cost of under $2,000 per genome. The whole operation fits comfortably in three rooms. Back in 2000, when its founder, J. Craig Venter, first sequenced a human genome (his own), it cost $100 million and took a building-size, $50 million computer nine months to complete.
Venter’s goal is to sequence at least one million genomes, something that seems likely to take the better part of a decade, and use the data generated from them—along with information about some of the DNA donors’ health histories and the results of other medical tests—to find better ways to treat and prevent a range of disorders common among aging people, from cancer to heart disease.
Venter, 69, has raised $300 million from investors that include GE Ventures, the biotech company Celgene, and Illumina, which supplies the sequencing machines. And HLI has partnerships with the British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and the South San Francisco–based Roche subsidiary Genentech...