The last time I checked with biologists, philosophers and even politicians on both sides of the debates about abortion, stem cell research and cloning, they were pretty certain human individuals were defined by two sets of chromosomes (half from the male, half from the female) which were arranged in the one-celled zygote after fertilization.

FORBES: Biologist Asserts Your Life Began...Before Fertilization.

His idea, ahead of its time, was greeted with a yawn by biologists.

FORBES: Health

The result is that biologists can study the expression of many different genes at the same time, a technique spectacularly illustrated last year by a group of researchers at Harvard who produced what they called brainbows.

ECONOMIST: The 2008 Nobel science prizes