Its four arms pick up glass plates, each dotted with 96 human-cell samples.

ECONOMIST: Transcending the genre

His 100, 000 cell samples need freezers, air conditioners (and backups for both), robotic handlers, repairmen, alarms--and electricity for it all.

FORBES: Magazine Article

As a relic of that ancestry they still have a few genes of their own and, because each cell has thousands of mitochondria, those genes are easier to find in old samples than are genes from the nucleus, of which there is only one per cell.

ECONOMIST: A new species of human

In non-small cell lung cancer, for instance, the tissue samples needed to identify these genetic markers are not routinely taken for practical reasons, says Mark Kris , an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York who has worked with Iressa and with OSI's Tarceva.

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Instead of labels, GenVault puts a tiny bit of unique rice DNA into each human cell sample, a sort of permanent bar code for the samples.

FORBES: The DNA Bar Code

Using tumor samples from wo-men with breast cancer, he used a gadget called a cell sorter to sift through dozens of different proteins on the surface of breast cancer cells, searching for patterns that might identify stem cells.

FORBES: Cancer Killer