For another, there is increasing doubt that a genetic map is worth much as a product--eventually, the information gets out.
Welsh people could lay claim to be the most ancient Britons, according to scientists who have drawn up a genetic map of the British Isles.
The new genetic map should bolster research into a number of diseases whose onset is associated with a combination of genetic predisposition and changes to the body's roster of bacteria.
Case in point: On Monday, DeCode Genetics published an important genetic map--assembled by methods very different from those used to create the sequence of the human genome--that will make it much easier for scientists to hunt down new genes linked to disease.
This is a recent expansion of the work started in 2007 to build the most detailed map of human genetic variation available.
So, I chatted with them, and in the course of things brought up the Genographic Project, which aims, using genetic mutations as signposts, to map human migration from our origins in Africa to all the places we live today.
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It should help them to find out where sub-sequences of the human genetic code fit into the overall gene map.
"Seven out of 10 studies looking at this problem, using the latest genetic fingerprinting techniques, find a significant association between the MAP strain found in cattle and Crohn's disease, " he said.
And the map-ping of the genome let scientists decode the genetic blueprint of new viruses like SARS, the virus that swept China in the spring, in a few days.
Genetic tests are now so cheap that Mr Goldin can draw us a map of how his own ancestors moved from east Africa 31, 000 years ago, across Arabia and through Central Asia before swinging back into northern Europe.
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