When you die, can he have your old genes?

Many a dearly departed's treasures -- diplomas, scrapbooks, bowling trophies -- wind up in a loved one's attic. Wayne Worgan wants people to preserve something more intimate. That's why he founded Greensboro-based LifeTree Technologies Inc., which, for $120, will sell you 25 years' storage of the deceased's DNA through more than 100 funeral homes nationwide.

The samples -- which contain the genetic code that transmits heredity -- aren't kept in musty attics but in climate-controlled labs that contract with LifeTree, including Burlington-based Laboratory Corp. of America. And they're not for cloning -- which requires different storage techniques and, after all, is illegal -- but for genetic profiling to identify disease-specific genes that might be inherited.

LifeTree makes this pitch in brochures passed out by funeral directors it trains to -- if authorized by next of kin -- scrape cells from inside the corpse's cheek or snip a bit of skin near the collarbone, then send the sample in LifeTree kits to a lab for analysis and cold storage.

Worgan estimates his $140,000 start-up -- funded by savings and proceeds from selling his stake in a previous company -- will produce revenues of $500,000 this year and $8 million in 2001. A recent $2 million private-placement offering should help with marketing, hiring and broadening the product mix.

Worgan, 37, isn't a scientist. The son of a construction worker and a housewife, he grew up in Pittsburgh and earned a GED in 1980 after dropping out of high school...