If you think that monetising people’s private experiences and personal data will be this century’s most valuable enterprise, think again. The real money is going to be made by understanding the biological assets codified in life on the planet.
Scientists are racing to put together what they call the “Book of Life”, the genetic sequences of all complex species on the planet and the relationships between them. So far they have only decoded 0.28 per cent of the relevant DNA. By contrast, chemists by the 1930s had set a solid scientific foundation for discovery and innovation through the periodic table of elements.
But that is about to change. Taking advantage of a million-fold decrease in the costs of genetic sequencing since 2003, when human DNA was first mapped, we recently launched the Earth BioGenome Project. We are seeking to fully sequence everything on the planet, on land and in the oceans, that has cells with nuclei, over the next 10 years.