Rarely do research subjects attend scientific meetings. Yet at the inaugural Cold Spring Harbor Personal Genomes meeting this month on Long Island in New York, the Nobel-prizewinning biologist James Watson sat in the front row as other researchers dissected his genetic vulnerabilities via a PowerPoint presentation. So far, Watson says, it has not been a particularly profound experience: "I haven't really learned anything, except that I'm lactose intolerant." Other than Watson, only three people have had their genomes sequenced in full, but other sequencing efforts are under way, including the Personal Genome Project and the 1,000 Genomes Project. And researchers may soon be able to start linking this flood of personal genomic data to the biology of individual humans and the species. The Cold Spring Harbor meeting marked the first steps in that direction. "It really feels like a new era is starting," says Martin Reese, a bioinformaticist at Omicia, which develops genome interpretation software in Emeryville, California.
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