$999 is way cheap for 23andme to be selling this, the microarrays cost $650 each before they are analyzed. As per a Techcrunch comment, I suspect they are subsidizing or selling below cost which will probably work out because of the rapidly falling costs in this area.
What materials are those arrays built out of? Do they require any special (laser trimmed) components? Special lithography? I smell an industry ripe to be commoditized by a startup.
I'm not sure what it actually takes to manufacture them -- there's definitely some lithography that goes into it but I don't know much beyond that. You might be able to convert an existing microprocessor plant into a DNA microarray plant but i don't really know.
This is the one that I believe 23andme is purchasing in bulk -- or, at least it is the highest end microarray sold by the company 23andme gets their arrays from. http://www.illumina.com/pagesnrn.ilmn?ID=70
23andMe must be paying out the nose for PR. There are at least 2 other well-funded companies in this space, and I don't see those folks getting features in the New York Times....
They have also presented the information in the best way I have ever seen such genetic information presented. This alone makes their product more appealing and more interesting to journalists. Take a look at the copy on this page -- https://www.23andme.com/gen101/variation/speed/ -- it's damn good copy.
True. They've got a couple of science writers on staff, and I'm impressed with their sense of style.
Still, that kind of stuff just doesn't explain a feature article in the New York Times. DeCODE is the big fish in this area, and I've heard next to nothing in the media about them. This seems like a blatant case of good PR.
(with the obvious caveat concerning Google and Sergey and Sergey's wife, of course)
