As the Smithsonian wraps a landmark genome exhibit, leaders in the field reflect on what’s changed

When the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History opened its genomics exhibit in 2013, the field was just celebrating the 10th anniversary of the completed Human Genome Project . Sequencing that first genome cost over $500 million . The genomes since cost $10,000.
In 2022, as the museum prepares to wrap up the landmark exhibit, much has changed. Gene names such as BRCA1 and HER2 have entered the public consciousness. Sequencing DNA has become faster, cheaper, and smaller-scale. Portable sequencers that were not even being sold commercially in 2013 have since been used to trace the evolution of the Ebola virus as it wreaked havoc in West Africa. The development of CRISPR-Cas9 landed a Nobel Prize. The cost of genome sequencing is rapidly approaching $100 . Read the rest…