BIOTECH

Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey
Co-founders // 23andMe

GENE GENIES Want to compare your ancestry with that of your spouse? Learn if you are really of Italian descent? Or more important, find out your risk of developing certain diseases? 23andMe has the answers. Co-founded by Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, this Silicon Valley startup is among the first of a handful of companies offering at-home genetic testing. Spit into a test tube, mail it to their lab, and in a few weeks you'll have online access to your very own genome via a secure website (cost: $999 plus shipping). Backed by investments from Genentech, Google—Wojcicki's husband is Google co-founder Sergey Brin—and a few private individuals, 23andMe helps customers learn their genetic predispositions for a wide range of health problems, from Type 2 diabetes to restless legs syndrome, and thus equip themselves to better deal with or even potentially prevent the onset of an illness. More radical is 23andMe's goal of facilitating what might be called grassroots research projects: studies in which people with a specific illness offer their samples en masse as a way to determine genetic links. The Parkinson's Institute is already collaborating with 23andMe on a study, and discussions are under way with advocacy groups for sufferers of autism—a constituency that has been vocal about the slow pace of research. —Amy Wallace

ART
Yue Minjun
Artist

MARKET MOVER Before the prices for Chinese art exploded, Yue Minjun was a relatively obscure painter. But in October, his Massacre of Chios sold at auction for $4.1 million at Sotheby's Hong Kong, and a week later, at a Sotheby's auction in London, his Execution fetched $5.9 million, a record for a Chinese contemporary work. Execution is a response to the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, in the manner of Édouard Manet's 19th-century masterpiece The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. Since the auctions, prices for Yue's previous work and that of his peers have jumped, helping make Chinese art a must-have for many big-name collectors in the business world, including ex-investment banker Kent Logan, ad magnate Charles Saatchi, and real estate heiress Pearl Lam. —Callen Bair