It would raise the stakes even higher, but that didn't stop Jay Flatley, Illumina's then chief executive, from sending in vials of his own saliva and blood to the company's newly opened lab. It was January 2009, and Illumina's scientists were about to embark on their first mission to sequence a whole human genome.
The project, internally dubbed "Jaynome," required a prescription from Flatley's doctor in case the scientists discovered something medically relevant. It took several weeks and cost tens of thousands of dollars for the lab to deduce the sequence of the genome.
Image: Noel Spirandelli for Fast Company
