The Palladium Letter | Palladium Editors | Substack

On June 26, 2000, President Bill Clinton announced the completion of the draft of the human genome at a press conference with the two project leads, Francis Collins and J. Craig Venter. A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. Scientists had conceived of the Human Genome Project in the 1980s, and, in the first half of the 1990s, expected it to be an endeavor that would go on for decades. But an unexpected technological revolution of faster computers and better chemistry accelerated the ten-year effort toward the finish line, just as the 20th century came to a close. The American-led international effort cost more than $3 billion dollars and involved thousands of people. Since then, the last 23 years of the 21st century have seen a sea change in the landscape of genomics, from blue-sky basic science to mass-market consumer products. Companies like Nebula now provide entire genome sequences that are medical-grade quality for $200; down from a price point of $20,000 just 1

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• Ratan Kaliani
• Taryn Livingstone