the multibillion-dollar human genome project's effort  to detail the entire set of human genes was biology's moonshot. But it might have never made it off the launch pad without one key piece of technology-the automated DNA sequencer. Labs crammed full of these machines, each rapidly determining the sequence of bits of DNA, were the fuel that made the project feasible. Leading the team that developed the sequencer shortly before the genome project was initiated in the mid-1980s is just one of the achievements that has helped turn Montana native Leroy Hood into a biotech superstar. Now 62, the Caltech-trained biologist has laid the foundations for a string of biotech companies, helped unravel the mysteries of the immune system and mad-cow-disease-causing prions, built-with $12 million from Bill Gates-a molecular biotechnology department at the University of Washington, and left the university behind to found his own institute, Seattle's Institute for Systems Biology.

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