YOU’VE heard of the “book of life”, but this is the real thing. An encyclopedia has been published that contains 172 pages of mouse DNA, including all 60,000 known active mouse genes. Work on a human equivalent has already begun, promising the ultimate in vanity publishing – anyone rich enough could one day pay to have their genome committed to print.
The book’s publishers hope it will slash the huge cost of distributing libraries of genetic material to universities and biotech companies around the world. While genetic sequence data can be distributed electronically, DNA itself must be sent by post. A whole genome has to be…
