king talk

Every new business niche goes through specific stages. Launch, proof, competition, consolidation. The business of your genetic code has now entered stage two, proof. Also known as, show me the money. Of all today’s start-ups it’s the best known, 23andme, which seems to be facing the stiffest headwinds. It has slashed prices, brought in new leadership, and faced no small amount of media ridicule, as reporters start asking the hard question — what’s it for? While 23andme has headed directly toward the mass market, Knome has headed to the class market. It puts its genome sequences on a stick, puts the stick in a box (above), then gives the box a fancy lid.

Compared to Moore´s Law the improvements in genetic engineering are more frequently. In 2001 a test costed about 3 million EUR. Knome said that they will store you genetic data as a backup. One of the investors for Knome is Google and the founder of Knome Anna Wojcicki is the wife of Google founder Sergei Brin. As Google is aimed to restore all data, this becomes all little bit scary. To Google:»I like your search engine, using maps everyday and I enjoy youtube, but don´t scan my DNA, please!«

via Sueddeutsche Zeitung (13th August 2009) and ZDNet

That’s right! The folks at the Art and Genomic centre in the Netherlands are working on a display that uses fluorescent bacteria for displaying images. »Bacteria« as in »Oh my god, the bacteria are loose!!«. (Actually I think they are pretty harmless)

However, this looks just fan-f*cking-tastic! They have more on their blog.

via Digital Tools