Scientists Laid Out a Technological Roadmap for What They'll Need to Write Synthetic Genomes From Scratch

An artist's representation of big data applied to DNA. (Credit: Zita/Shutterstock) At first, it was just Mendel and some pea plants. In the 150 years that followed, matching pairs of chromosomes were labeled, As, Ts Cs and Gs were coupled off and, ultimately, 3 billion base pairs were sequenced in the correct order. By the end of the decade-long global effort known as the Human Genome Project, the genetic blueprint of life was finally sketched out. Now, a smattering of scientists are joi