IN THE SUMMER OF 1984 the senior scientists of Cetus Corp., a Berkeley biotech company, found themselves in a bind. PCR ultimately did change the world, and Mullis joined the ranks of UC Berkeley’s 53 Nobel Prize winners. Cetus scientists had developed a method to isolate tiny fragments of DNA and test them for relevant mutations. In essence, Cetus scientists would now have a traffic jam to examine through their telescope. It wasn’t the first supposedly “revolutionary” idea Mullis had touted.