ASIEH NAMDAR, CNN ANCHOR: Researchers in Singapore say they've made an important medical discovery. A team of scientists says it has figured out how to accurately predict whether a person is likely to develop heart disease. Singapore's Channel NewsAsia reports on what they've found.</s>BRIDGETTE SEE, CHANNEL NEWSASIA REPORTER (voice-over): This is the world's first diagnostic DNA micro-array, a prototype that can assess a person's predisposition to heart disease based on his genes. It can accurately predict whether someone will get heart disease, because genetics make up 65 percent of the factors causing heart disease while other factors, like lifestyle and environment, contribute the other 35 percent.</s>DR. HENG CHEW KIAT, RESEARCHER: If he knows that he has got very high genetic</s>SEE: Samples of a person's genes are placed onto glass slides and are tested against 30 genetic risk markers. Researchers expect the micro-array to make it from the lab to the market in two years time. And the other breakthrough: this little chip, the world's fastest DNA amplification system. Together with this other chip, which is a detector, they form the new definition of a gene laboratory. They allow scientists to amplify a single DNA a multimillion times and to analyze them.</s>DR. SRIDHAR UPPILI, RESEARCHER: The basic underlying this is portability. So you can take these chips, which eventually can be made like a credit card, and with a portable</s>SEE: But this pocket dynamite isn't just small and fast. It's also going to be affordable when researchers succeed in making them out of plastic, which will translate into more affordable medical diagnosis.
Researchers in Singapore Using DNA Technology to Screen for Heart Disease Genes