Dan Stoicescu is paying a company $350,000 to map his genome.

By AMY HARMON


On a cold day in January, Dan Stoicescu, a millionaire living in Switzerland, became the second person in the world to buy the full sequence of his own genetic code.
He is also among a relatively small group of individuals who could afford the $350,000 price tag.
Mr. Stoicescu is the first customer of Knome, a Cambridge, Massachusettsbased company that has promised to parse his genetic blueprint by spring.
A Chinese executive has signed on for the same service with Knome’s partner, the Beijing Genomics Institute in China, the company said.
Scientists have so far unraveled only a handful of complete human genomes, all financed by governments, foundations and corporations in the name of medical research.
But as the cost of genome sequencing goes from stratospheric to merely very expensive, it is piquing the interest of a new clientele.
“I’d rather spend my money on my genome than a Bentley or an airplane,’’ said Mr. Stoicescu, 56, a biotechnology entrepreneur who retired two years ago after selling his company.
He says he will check discoveries about genetic disease risk against his genome sequence daily, “like a stock portfolio.
’’ But while money may buy a full readout of the six billion chemical units in an individual’s genome, biologists say the superrich will have to wait like everyone else to learn how the small variations in their sequence influence appearance, behavior, abilities, disease susceptibility and other traits.
“I was in someone’s Bentley once - nice car,’’ said James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, whose genome was sequenced last year by a company that donated the $1.
5 million in costs to demonstrate its technology.
“Would I rather have my genome sequenced or have a Bentley- Uh, toss up.
’’ He would probably pick the genome, Dr. Watson said, because it could reveal a disease-risk gene that one had passed on to one’s children, though in his case, it did not.
What is needed, he said, is a genome that is affordable for everyone.
Biologists have mixed feelings about the emergence of the genome as a luxury item.
Some worry that what they have dubbed “genomic elitism’’ could sour the public on genetic research that has long promised better, individualized health care for all.
But others see the boutique genome as something like a $20 million tourist voyage to space - a necessary rite of passage for technology that may soon be within the grasp of the rest of us.
“We certainly don’t want a world where there’s a great imbalance of access to comprehensive genetic tests,’’ said Richard A. Gibbs, director of the human genome sequencing center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
“But to the extent that this can be seen as an idiosyncratic exercise of curious individuals who can afford it, it could be quite a positive phenomenon.
’’ Illumina, a sequencing firm in San Diego, plans to sell whole genome sequencing to the “rich and famous market’’ this year, said its chief executive, Jay Flatley.
If competition drives prices down, the personal genome may lose its exclusivity.
But for now, Knome’s prospective customers are high-end.
The company has been approached by hedge fund managers, Hollywood executives and an individual from the Middle East who could be contacted only through a third party, said Jorge Conde, Knome’s chief executive.
Eugene Katchalov, 27, a money manager in Manhattan who has met with Mr. Conde twice, said: “I feel like everyone’s going to have to get it done at some point, so why not be one of the first-”