LAS VEGASThere's really only one question people ask about CES: What is the coolest thing you saw? Everyone asksvendors, the press, and the taxi cab drivers that take you back to your hotel in the middle of the night. And there is a lot of pressure to find the right answer. As of last night, I had to say it was the 85-inch Sharp 8K HDTV, which has four times as many pixels as your standard 1080p set. But now I have a better answer. It's the Life Technologies Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer.

Tucked away in the North Hall, not far from where Ford is showing off its new Mustangs, is a device that can sequence an entire human genome in just eight hours. It looks like a splice between a laser printer and soft ice cream dispenser. All of the work is done on a single piece of silicon.

The Proton uses a combination of chemicals and a silicon chip to identify and map individual genes. The ship itself does the sequencing. Just add a few drops of gene-rich solution to the chip and it identifies the unique chemical properties of each gene.

Until now, this is a process that took weeks and could cost $10,000 or more. The Proton Ion will be able to do it for just $1,000.

The Ion Proton Sequencer costs $149,000proof that no product is immune from the influence of retail marketing strategists. Would people really have balked at $150K? I don't think so. Not when the going rate for a genetic sequencer is $800,000.

The price point alone makes the Ion Proton a game changer. Now every hospital and university in the nation can get sequencers for about the same price as an MRI machine.

What exactly would you want to do with a genetic sequencer? Aside from find out a whole lot about your personal biology, imagine doing biopsy of a cancerous tumor, running it through the sequencer and then using the data to determine the therapies that would be most effective.

Evidently, there is still room at CES for some serious innovation.