Brin should do what many in the health-obsessed Valley unilaterally shun: Take up smoking, as nicotine has been shown to have a prophylactic effect on the degeneration of dopamine-producing brain cells in mice.

But by figuring out the single-nucleotide polymorphisms which lead to chiseled features and a high-powered metabolism, Wojcicki might figure out how to make sure her next child with Google cofounder Sergey Brin is healthy, smart and ravishingly beautiful according to media norms. My suggestion? New York's models should be making 23andMe pay them for saliva samples. It's not like Wojcicki, whose startup is already backed by her husband's employer, can't dial for more dollars from Google's new venture investment arm whenever she feels like it.

Why is Roche rocking the boat? Its stake in Genentech already provides a large part of its earnings; owning all of Genentech would maximize Roche's take. But this could be a classic case of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Genentech's top scientists are already wealthy from stock options; loyalty to Levinson is mostly what's keeping them at the company, writes the In Vivo biotech blog. And Levinson, who has already been at the company for 28 years, is likely to walk if Roche's buyout goes through.

That could be very good for Bay Area biotech startups, and the venture capitalists who fund them. Unlike today's Web startups, which are frustratingly cheap to launch, biotech ventures require real money, which means VCs have something to offer. An exodus of talent from Genentech could turbocharge the sector.

And what of Levinson himself? He could well expand his role at Google. Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, tellingly, are married to women with biotech backgrounds, and have a fascination with the subject. They see the human genome as just another part of the world's information, which they've made it their mission to organize. Could Levinson become part of Larry and Sergey's intellectual petting zoo — like Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet? It sounds like a better gig than sitting in an office in South San Francisco taking orders from the Swiss.

Seeing as how 23andMe gave a free test to California resident Michael Arrington, that some doctors are skeptical of the medical value of such tests, and that the company freely admits that the tests are for novelty purposes only, I'm guessing the consumer complaints over accuracy and cost that prompted the investigation aren't wholly without merit. Twelve other companies, including San Francisco's Navigenics, are also being investigated. (Photo by Sergio Calleja)

The tests can help to pinpoint a person's ethnic heritage, as sent up in the latest episode of The Boondocks.

This suggests an alternate business model for 23andMe. Why doesn't Google run racial-background tests on all their employees? The company might just discover that there are more black Googlers than previously thought.

Some factoids from his chat with host Tim O'Reilly:

• In 2001, when Venter's team first mapped his complete genome, they presumed that our individual DNA codes would be almost entirely identical. Since then they've found humans vary by a couple of percentage points.
• Venter's current top project is to map the DNA of 10,000 more humans. He thinks the price will come down to under $100,000 per person in three years.
• You have more individual bacteria living in your body than you do human cells.
• A round-the-world survey ship found that in the world's oceans, DNA of the local life varies completely every 200 miles, and probably even more locally than that.
• Soldiers in Iraq eventually acquire a completely different set of bacteria in their mouths than they arrived with.
• Human DNA contains spliced-in codes for pathogens that have crept in over the ages.
• Venter worries that startups like DNA Direct and 23andMe will only check small subsections of their clients' DNA — say, to look for heart disease risk — and miss the big picture.
• Venter's green project: Looking for genetically engineered bacteria that will produce electricity from human waste or from host plants — also engineered — that thrive on currently unfarmable land.

(Photo by AP/Matt Houston)

Illumina would then be able to tell 23andMe about hundreds of DNA variations, called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, that each customer has. 23andME would make that information available through a password-protected Web site.

Oh grand. I'll just write it down with all my other passwords.

If you don't have time to properly evaluate an investment opportunity, just use the Hair Rule: any investment in a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists is a guaranteed success.

Think about it. These people are followers of Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Sir Isaac Newton, they're part of a healthy interdisciplinary network, and they know how to think long-term.

Entrepreneur backs research on anti-aging [SF Chronicle]
Photo of Aubrey de Grey by Jacob Botter, CC license [Flickr]

• Google and Apple have switched spots, with Google now at #1 in an official recognition of its millions and millions of fanboys.
• Genentech makes it to #4 because Wired got confused and thought it's the company from Jurassic Park.
• News Corp's on the list for the first time. The TV networks, newspapers, book publishers, magazines, and movie studios didn't matter to Wired, but hey, now they have a SOCIAL NETWORK! Oh boy!
• Intel drops down the list, proving that teaming up with Apple only gets you so far.

The Wired 40 [Wired Magazine]
Illo: The Obvious [Splash page]

Quit the crackpot theories and focus on the really important questions — like, "Is M.C. Hammer playing at the Google party?"

Google accused of biopiracy [ZDNet]