Illumina Would Like You to Sequence More DNA, Please

WHAT DO YOU when you’re so clearly winning? When you’ve crushed your competitors and left them fighting over crumbs? If you’re Illumina, the biotech giant whose name has become synonymous with DNA sequencing machines, you look around and put some of your extra cash in a startup trying to make better wine. Or healthier dairy cows. Or smart tampons.

These are all industries Illumina thinks can benefit from an influx of genetic sequencing, and these are all real startups that have gone through Illumina Accelerator, which nurtures young companies with cash, San Francisco office space, and access to its DNA sequencing machines. Today, Illumina is announcing the two members in the fourth round of its accelerator program: REX, a Kansas City-based animal health company and the Center of Individualized Diagnostics, a genomics center in Saudi Arabia.

There is a method to this eclecticism. Illumina today dominates a decently sized pie, selling DNA sequencing machines to research labs. If Illumina could also sell its machines to doctors and hospital labs and agriculture companies, then that pie...