Google cofounder Sergey Brin has popped his blogging cherry, using his first post as an excuse to promote his wife Anne Wojcicki's personal genetic testing company 23andMe. Turns out Brin has a genetic mutation likely inherited from his mother that indicates a higher risk for Parkinson's Disease — a debilitating…

Google-backed startup 23andMe is working on fixing the Bay Area beauty gap by convincing the pretty people at New York's Fashion Week to submit genetic samples for the new, low cost of $399. As non-California residents, Manhattanites represent a genetic talent pool untouched by regulatory agencies in the startup's…

You're forgiven if you don't know there's a company a few miles north of Google that pulls in more than $10 billion a year selling drugs. Genentech makes the cancer treatment Avastin, the arthritis and lymphoma drug Rituxan, and the breast cancer fighter Herceptin, each of which bring in a few billion a year. Its…

The Berkeley Police department responded to a call of a suspicious suitcase outside a building owned by Bayer AG on 7th street between Dwight and Parker. The pharmaceutical manufacturer has their biotechnology headquarters in the town and contributes grants to student research at the University of California. …

Got to hand it to the team at 23andMe — when employees say that their personal gene sequencing services serve no medical purpose whatsoever, they mean it. Case in point is the company's latest blog post promises that with enough customer feedback, they may just be able to answer the age old question "Is my distaste…

South of the City and hard by the shores of San Francisco Bay, Genentech rarely attracts the attention of the founders of flashy Internet startups as they drive past its offices on the way to the airport. But the biotech company's longtime CEO, Art Levinson, is an integral part of the Silicon Valley scene, serving…

As F. Scott Fitzgerald once quipped, "The rich are different than you and me." Case in point here is this pet cruising on Echo Lake in the Sierras, apparently one of six privately cloned in South Korea from a deceased dog named Missy. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's…

Not a good week for the Wojcicki family. Googler Susan Wojcicki has been caught making expensive demands on Google's daycare facilities. Meanwhile, her sister Anne, wife of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, is fending off cease-and-desist letters from pesky health regulators. Anne's company, Google-backed 23andMe, was…

Facing possible fines and jail time, local gene sequencers Navigenics and 23andMe will have to get permits if they want to continue testing resident of New York state. Meanwhile, California is investigating 12 complaints against unnamed gene sequencing companies, with officials noting that "all genetic tests must be…

Personal gene sequencing is all the rage among technophiles. But the medical establishment isn't necessarily on board — for starters, no insurance company will cover the cost, and doctors aren't always prepared to appropriately evaluate the results of a test. In an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine,…

Most passersby don't notice California Institute for Regenerative Medicine's austere signage tucked between Borders and Amici's on King Street, kitty-corner from the ballpark . And the San Francisco-based CIRM has struggled to turn its $3 billion in state funding into an active economic engine for the area. But a…

What are Sergey Brin and Larry Page really obsessed about? Look no further than their choice in lifemates, says Attila Csordas. Sergey Brin married 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki — and also lent the company $2.6 million, which Google repaid when it invested $3.9 million in the company. Larry Page's fiancée, Lucy…

J. Craig Venter is the scientist whose startup beat the government-funded Human Genome Project to mapping a single person's entire DNA. Whose DNA? Duh, Venter's! On the last morning of the Web 2.0 Summit, Venter brought the audience up to date on the faster-than-Moore's-Law advances in reading and writing genes.

Lord Justice Sedley, pictured here looking prim, has ruled that every person living in or visiting the United Kingdom ought to submit his or her DNA to a nationwide criminal database, to offset the presumed bias against "ethnic minorities" who make up the bulk of the existing database. Apparently, this guy is a…

We're nothing if not cynics about "new hot fields." Why do we trust former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel when he invests in biotech out of a hope to indefinitely extend the human lifespan? Because his recipient, Methuselah Foundation head Aubrey de Grey, is hairy.

Oh boy, another list! The ink has hardly dried on Business 2.0 Magazine's People Who Matter list, and Wired Magazine has already trumped it with the annual "Wired 40" list. While Business 2.0 is just playing Truman Capote, Wired's list is a de facto investment guide for the casual midwestern techie. Some highlights: