Feedback | New Scientist SOFT, UNSWEET, BLAND, with a touch of acid and a hint of salt. It doesn’t have a good finish, just fades away. Sounds like a dull wine, doesn’t it? But this is a billion-dollar taste: DNA itself. After all the reports on the sequencing of the human genome detailing clashes over priority, and claims and counterclaims about commercial exploitation versus free public use, one journalist found a new twist. The New Yorker’s Richard Preston profiled Celera’s Craig Venter in advance of the big announcement that the genome had been sequenced. He reports that one of Celera’s scientists, Nobel prizewinner Hamilton Smith, showed him a glass vial of human DNA. It was, Preston said, “a crystal-clear, syrupy liquid”—though pointing to its viscosity Smith commented “I guess it’s like snot, too.” Preston touched the DNA and found it “sticky . . . like cotton candy”. Then he asked the big question: “Would it taste sweet?” “Actually, I’ve never tasted it,” said Smith. Preston now has. Later in the day, he decided to sample a bit of dried calf DNA. It melted into a gluey ooze that stuck to the roof of his mouth. And the taste? “It had a soft taste, unsweet, rather blan