Do-it-yourself DNA
The cost of reading DNA is expected to drop as dramatically in 2009 as the stock market did last year. Technology has made it so fast and cheap to unravel the six billion chemical units of the human genome that the amount of DNA you can read for a dollar has been doubling every 12 months.
DNA is the famed double helix coiled into each of our 10 trillion cells. It contains the operating instructions to build and operate a human being and a slew of secrets about our health. Being able to routinely read it – even if fully understanding DNA remains a long way off – is expected to launch the age of personalized medicine.
In 2001, the first human genome map rang in at close to $1-billion (U.S.). By the end of 2007, a whole genome map cost about $100,000. Some predict the price of sequencing a full genome could plummet to as little as $10,000 within a few years.
In the meantime, that's likely to put all sorts of DNA scans within reach of middle-class pocket books. This past year, the prominent California company 23andMe, created in part by the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, dropped the price of its genome scan from $1,000 to $400. The scan includes a report that estimates a customer's risk of developing diabetes, Parkinson's disease and age-related macular degeneration, along with a wide range of other conditions. It also delves into the body's more whimsical traits from true eye and hair colour, to revealing your earwax type (wet or dry).
Still, direct-to-consumer genetic testing remains a hugely controversial field. Most experts agree that predicting health on broad sweep genetic tests is terribly premature. Some scientists say you will learn more from your horoscope. Alberta lawyer and ethicist Tim Caulfield has warned that these types of tests could also give rise to a generation of the “worried well” – people who learn about their genetic susceptibility to a disease they will never get, or a potential condition they can do nothing about.
But love it or loathe it, a number of companies have already sprung up to cash in on this form of crystal-ball medicine. Geneticist Steve Scherer, a senior scientist with Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, suspects the wide access is a sign of things to come: “Technology is poised for each of us to know our own genome sequence for little more than the cost of a pair of shoes.”
- Carolyn Abraham
The 3-D revolution
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has declared 2009 the year of 3-D films. He announced recently that, starting this month, all movies produced in his studio will be made in 3-D. Not only that, he trumpeted the technology as the third cinematic revolution – behind sound and colour.
Despite the economic downturn putting a wrinkle in his hopes for 5,000 3-D screens worldwide by the time DreamWorks's Monsters vs. Aliens is released in the spring, Mr. Katzenberg said he still expected 40 per cent of the film's box office to come via 3-D. (And, by the 2010 release of the next Shrek instalment, that should rise to 70 per cent.) Around a dozen 3-D films are already set for release this year, including James Cameron's Avatar – reportedly the most expensive movie ever made, with a budget of $250-million to $300-million (U.S.) At the same time, 3-D TV technology is developing fast – the buzz at this month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is all around TVs capable of supporting 3-D programming. It will be some time before every home boasts a 3-D TV, but meanwhile the conversion of movie screens to digital 3-D projection continues. Cineplex owns 1,300 screens across Canada, about 60 of which are 3-D compatible. “Our goal is to increase that to around 20 per cent,” said Pat Marshall, vice-president of communications and investor relations at Cineplex.
