Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009

Stephan Schuster and Webb Miller

AGE: 46 and 65, respectively
OCCUPATION: Gene genies
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 0

PRO: The Penn State professor is a pioneer of "museomics," in which ancient samples of hooves, hair or fur are used to decode an extinct creature's DNA. He's currently working to map the genome of the wooly mammoth, which he claims can then be cloned for about $10 million.

CON: The technology is largely untested, and Schuster has already prompted a lot of tsk-tsking from cloning opponents.