what do you think it is for?
at first i thought it was used to create some sort of "power-giving elixir" because i saw the word potential, and because of all the series notation (which could be related to DNA sequencing) but now i have my doubts...

if mohinder was able to find a way to grant powers so easily why would they go to the trouble of protecting the formula and giving it this "untouchable" aspect?

maybe mohinder has discovered an unnatural and imperfect way to do it, as maya said and evidenced by his scales, and the formula is in fact the perfect recipe to give people godlike powers..

or maybe it is a formula to take away powers, which would explain why ando would want to take it from hiro in the future (he likes his red lightning)

what do you think?

the big question for me at least isn't what the formula was ( i thought it was pretty obvious it gives powers ) but how did kaito get the formula ?

he said his father kept the secret & his father before him...sooooo..wouldn't that pre-date the advance of chemistry to that level - drawing the binding blocks or whatever (if anyone does chemistry help me out here )

if thats the case - how did they get it ? was it sent back in time in order to hide it / protect it ?

just a guess like...

I immediately started a post (http://boards.9thwonders.com/index.php?showtopic=64719) where I said think the Formula deals with the specific mixture of parent's abilities to achieve desired powers in children. I think it's long history ties in with the introduction of another "painter" and the age of the Symbol in that, long ago, someone with a Precognition ability saw the future, the DNA helix and the chemical/genetic combinations to achieve ultimate powers and drew/painted them. Considering Linderman seemed to have a "breeding" program, arranging Niki and D.L.'s relationship in order to get Micah (as he implied) and the similarities between Peter and Sylar as having "ultimate" powers and what we learned at the end of S3E2, it would seem the genealogy is VERY essential to the Heroes world, and I think the Formula outlines family-trees for specific powers. I don't think it's connected to Mohinder's research, which I suspect will prove to be significantly weaker and more unstable than true abilities.

I'm just wondering... could we assume that the Formula has nothing to do with the stuff that caused Future Tokyo to blow up, right after FHiro is killed/stunned by FAndo?