What is the current market value of a Nobel Prize? Until yesterday, that question would have been virtually impossible to answer, which proved to be advantageous to the family of Francis Crick. Heritage Auctions, the entity that conducted the sale of Crick’s 23-carat gold medal in New York this week, declared it a "historic moment."

As such, bidding started at $250,000.

Misha Angrist, otherwise known as member four of the Personal Genome Project, has—along with Stephen Pinker and some other science-world luminaries—given permission for his entire genome to be published online. As a trained geneticist, he's more equipped to predict the direction and effects of DNA research than the rest of us. His new book, Here is a Human Being, ponders the implications of this kind of bioforensics for our culture at large, and also for those of us, like me, who've already opened this Pandora's box by subscribing to 23andme or one of the other personal genomics outlets. Will our information be kept private? [...]

Having trouble with iCloud? Confused by CrashPlan? Today's smart tech consumers are getting ready to purchase the sturdiest backup media of all: human DNA. The mad scientists behind a weird new study say that the double helix of genetic code has been successfully used to store all kinds of documents, including audio files and text of Shakespeare's sonnets and "a picture of their office," because most of what we digitally save is silly garbage. (Future archeologists will likely be baffled by the discovery of, say, a flash drive holding nothing but hundreds of weirdly filtered pictures of somebody's entrée with a glass of wine in the background. "These [...]

Well that's just great: "Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases." Even better, DNA scavengers could potentially lift someone's genetic code from a stray hair or coffee cup and then get it tested, creating a whole new breed of what this article refers to as "genetic paparazzi," and Harvey Levin thinks of as "the game changer." And we haven't even talked about the terrifying possibility that someone could clone Hitler or Robert Novak using this information. It's scary times ahead!

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago. His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer.

—Don't worry, potential surrogate moms: The professor thinks Neanderthals might've been smarter than us, in some way or another that might come in handy when Homo Sapiens are wiped out by an upcoming apocalypse.