Biotech Firms Battle Over Same Day Genomes

Illumina, the leading maker of DNA sequencers, will launch a new machine that can read a human genome in a little more than a day, dramatically faster than its current market-dominating machine. The announcement, made by Illumina chief executive Jay Flatley at the JP Mogan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco and shared with Forbes in advance of the meeting, comes only hours after Illumina’s main competitor, Life Technologies, announced that it would be launching a machine that would eventually be able to sequence a human genome in just hours for a per-genome cost of as little as $1,000.