60th Anniversary of DNA Double Helix Discovery

[shadow=magenta:3pe8x9d6]Happy Double Helix Day!![/shadow:3pe8x9d6]

DNA’s Double Anniversary
By Dr. Francis Collins, on April 25th, 2013

April 25 is a very special day. In 2003, Congress declared April 25th DNA Day to mark the date that James Watson and Francis Crick published their seminal one-page paper in Nature [1] describing the helical structure of DNA. That was 60 years ago. In that single page, they revealed how organisms elegantly store biological information and pass it from generation to generation; they discovered the molecular basis of evolution; and they effectively launched the era of modern biology.

But that’s not all that’s special about this date. It was ten years ago this month that we celebrated the completion of all of the original goals of the Human Genome Project (HGP), ...The $3 billion, 13-year project involved more than 2,000 scientists from six countries. They worked tirelessly and creatively to do something once thought impossible, never worrying about who got the credit, and giving all of the data away immediately so that anyone who had a good idea about how to use it for human benefit could proceed immediately. Biology will never be the same. Medical research will never be the same.

So how cheap is it to read your genome? Today, a scientist can decode it for just $3,000–$5,000 in only a few days...

read more at the link! (I'm such a sentimental geek, reading this chokes me up at all that we've accomplished, selflessly and for the better of humankind. science is awesome.)