The project that first sequenced a human genome in 2000 took 15 years and cost about $3 billion.
Now it takes six to eight weeks and costs as little as $100. Takers include actress Vanessa Williams, who has a long interest in tracing her family history.
“I’ve got blue eyes, my brother also has light eyes, and everyone says, ‘Well, what are you? You’re mixed with something. What is it?’” Williams told The Huffington Post. “My parents are black … but I was a bit defensive, because I don’t know, all of my relatives look like me. And we know as much as we can.”
Two years ago, Williams found herself choking back tears as she traced her family history during the second season of NBC’s now-defunct series, “Who Do You Think You Are?”
“I knew more about my father’s side because we opened the show visiting my family cemetery in Oyster Bay, New York,” Williams said, recalling the discoveries she made on the show, including a tintype photograph of her great great-grandfather David Carll, a Civil War veteran.
“I got a chance to go to the National Archives and see a tintype, which he had sent in to get his military benefits,” Williams said. “Because he couldn’t read or write, because he was a laborer in Oyster Bay on the fishing ships, they got his name wrong. When he was released … he sent a picture in a tintype to the government to prove who he was. That was an amazing discovery to actually see him in his Union uniform with the American flag draped over his knee. It was phenomenal.”
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article courtesy of TheHuffingtonPost.com
