Will the Gene Microscope Change the World?

Clifford Reid predicts a paradigm shift in genome sequencing.

BOSTON- The invention of the light microscope in 1590 advanced many scientific disciplines, but medicine, curiously wasn't one of them. Three hundred years later, a series of closely timed microscope advancements proved the tipping point and tuberculosis was all but eradicated in three years.

"We're building gene microscopes," said Complete Genomics' CEO Clifford Reid. "With this technology and the computer technology available to us, we're going to change the world."

In the final keynote, Reid attributed the ge- nome sequencing explo- sion to the recent arrival of a series of disruptive technologies. …