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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. A process that took squadrons of scientists several years and billions of dollars may soon be part of medical routine. Recent advances now make it possible to unravel a person's complete genetic code in a matter of weeks, for roughly about the cost of an MRI.

Doctors can use that genome sequence to help diagnose and treat patients with mysterious or hidden conditions. But these advantages come with questions, too, about ethics, about accuracy, about usefulness and about costs. So what do you want to know from your genetic code? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Later in the program, President Bill Pullman, from "Independence Day" to "1600 Penn." But first, NPR's science correspondent Rob Stein joins us here in Studio 3A.

Nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION, Rob.

ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Oh, nice to be here, Neal.

CONAN: And what's driving this speed-up in the genetic code process?

STEIN: Yeah, it's really been kind of a revolution in the ability to decode the genetic code. It wasn't that long ago that, as you said, it took hundreds of scientists, and it cost something like $3 billion just to get a rough draft of the first genetic blueprint. And what's happened over the last 12 years or so is that technology's really gone kind of crazy, and it's a combination of computing power and new techniques for - in optics and some chemical processes that can really speed up the process unbelievably.

And now it can take, as you said, a matter of weeks, and there is even some talk that there's some new techniques that could bring it down to just a matter of days, or even hours, potentially.

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Do You Want To Know Your DNA's Secrets?