A male Yoruba from Nigeria and a Han Chinese man joined genetics luminaries James Watson and Craig Venter on Wednesday as the only people to have their genomes sequenced and made publicly available. The two anonymous genomes serve as proof that new sequencing technologies, which are orders of magnitude cheaper than standard methods, are capable of accurately reading the sequence of a complete human genome.

New sequencing technologies boost speed and reduce cost by simultaneously sequencing hundreds of thousands of pieces of DNA.

Over the past decade, the cost of sequencing has dropped dramatically. While the reference sequence generated during the Human Genome Project cost $300 million, Watson’s genome, released last year and sequenced using a technology developed by 454 Life Sciences, in Branford, CT, cost about $1 to 2 million. The Yoruba genome cost an estimated $250,000 and took only two months to complete, using technology from Illumina.