Living organisms come with a lot of building instructions. Inside each of our cells lies what's essentially a Lego manual except much larger and coiled up funny. But humans aren't the only ones written in DNA. Our animal cousins are, of course, built much the same way, and even plants have genomes. Scientists are of course most concerned with sequencing the human genome because it'd be kind of cool to figure out exactly how our bodies work, why we get sick in strange ways, why we all get old and die without exception. But sequencing the DNA of other organisms can help us in our quest to understand human mortality as well. Specifically--and perhaps amusingly--the DNA of the cannabis plant.

Marijuana is already used as a medicinal treatment for a variety of conditions, but researchers are trying to find more ways to harness the power of the plant for good--and with more official methodologies than just telling patients (or pretend patients) to smoke up and feel better. Kevin McKernan founded the new company Medicinal Genomics to try to analyze strains of therapeutic plants and narrow down what exactly makes them beneficial to humans. Weed is a tightly controlled substance, after all, and in most states it can't even be prescribed by doctors. But cannabinoids might be able to do amazing things to diseases like cancer, including shrinking tumors. If scientists could find a way to isolate the tumor-shrinking powers of the pot plant, we might have a new treatment for cancer on our hands. And we wouldn't have to worry about the political baggage that marijuana carries--it would be a special strain engineered solely for medicine without any of the mind-altering side effects. Mind you, the project is still incipient--they've only gathered the raw genetic sequence. It's not exactly in order yet, but they're working hard at phase two.