Stephen Quake

摘要

The microchip revolutionized electronics, making computations faster and cheaper. Stephen Quake says his "microfluidic chip" could help do the same for drug discovery, prenatal testing, and other genetics applications. "We think about it as the biological equivalent of the integrated circuit," says Quake, a 41-year-old bioengineer-ing professor at Stanford University. His chip dramatically streamlines genetic research: An experiment that would have required a week and 18,000 steps using standard lab equipment can be done in three hours and 200 steps.