The scraggly cornstalks sprouting from pots in Andy Hiatt's laboratory don't look particularly unusual. But woven into their DNA is a tiny strip of mankind: a human gene that codes for an antibody to a sexually transmitted disease--genital herpes--that afflicts some 60 million Americans. When the corn plants mature and produce kernels, Hiatt's company, Epicyte Pharmaceutical of San Diego, hopes to turn them into a topical gel for herpes.
And that's just for starters. Epicyte is one of a host of biotech companies that have seized on the information in the map of the human genome--a map that was officially...
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