A person wanting to know his or her complete genetic blueprint can already have it done  for $350,000.

But whether a personal genome readout becomes affordable to the rest of us could depend on efforts like the one taking place secretly in a nondescript Silicon Valley industrial park. There, Pacific Biosciences has been developing a DNA sequencing machine that within a few years might be able to unravel an individual’s entire genome in minutes, for less than $1,000. The company plans to make its first public presentation about the technology on Saturday.

Pacific Biosciences, or PacBio, is just one entrant in a heated race for the “$1,000 genome”  a gold rush of activity whose various contestants threaten to shake up the current $1-billion-a-year market for machines that sequence, or read, genomes. But the company has attracted some influential investors. And some outside experts say that if the technology works  still a big if  it would represent a significant advance.

“They’re the technology that’s going to really rip things apart in being that much better than anyone else,” predicted Elaine R. Mardis, the co-director of the genome center at Washington University in St. Louis.