While giving a tour of Helicos BioSciences' laboratories in Cambridge, Mass., Bill Efcavitch pauses and pats a refrigerator-size 3700 DNA sequencer. The sequencer was made by Applied Biosystems, where Efcavitch worked until 2004. "It's the platform that sequenced the human genome," says Efcavitch, Helicos' senior vice president of product research and development, "and I managed the group that did that." Now, the instrument he helped develop (which Helicos purchased in the used market) serves as an analytical tool to back up a new style of genome sequencer that Efcavitch is developing. Helicos promises to deliver what the many model 3700 instruments did for millions of dollars in several years for just $1,000 in 10 days.
Like Efcavitch's projects before it, Helicos' HeliScope sequencer is an exercise in ambition. A prototype, also a refrigerator-size box, stands in Helicos' engineering department. Efcavitch pulls open a door on the box, revealing a touch-screen ...
