

Man places his genome in public domain, on Github - metabrew
http://manu.sporny.org/2011/public-domain-genome/

======
sandipc
Technically this isn't his entire genome - just SNPs.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism>)

One major problem with developing a "Google for the human genome" is that we
don't actually understand how most of the genes (coding) and noncoding regions
in our DNA actually work or interact with each other... except at a very basic
level for a very limited set of genes.

There are genome browsers out there already that came out of the human genome
project and work in that direction. One example: <http://huref.jcvi.org/>

~~~
cjbprime
Yeah, I was disappointed that it's not a full genome too.

It's by no means all of his SNPs, either -- each person has around 3 million
actual SNPs (variations from the reference genome), and 23andme just chooses a
million sites that _could_ be the location of a SNP to look at, most of which
won't actually be points of variation for most people.

So, 23andme is only looking for common SNPs you might have. If you have a rare
SNP you're interested in, or if you're a researcher trying to analyze the
effects of an uncommon SNP, you're out of luck with 23andme data.

~~~
ryanlower
I agree, but still applaud Manu's release of something many consider so
private.

Even though this isn't a genome sequence, there is potential for interesting
analyses if lots of people release their 23andme data. (I believe 23andme use
the same SNPs for every user).

------
sskates
A lot of the “aren’t you afraid that somebody is going to use that against
you?" remarks are reminiscent of the early days of the internet, when people
were afraid to put pictures of themselves or their contact info online.
There's now a $50 billion dollar company dedicated to doing just that.

------
bbgm
This thread is probably a good place to point to perhaps the best resource on
the web for personal genomics today, the Genomes Unzipped blog
<http://www.genomesunzipped.org/>

The authors have not only released their genetic information into the public
domain (<http://www.genomesunzipped.org/data>), but also developed a custom
genome browser (<http://www.genomesunzipped.org/jbrowse>), have an API, and a
github repo for code they will release
(<https://github.com/genomesunzipped/genomesunzipped>).

These are early days in personal genomics, so it's great to see others jumping
in. Hopefully they all do so with some awareness, and folks like Genomes
Unzipped do a great job in creating that awareness, and never forgetting that
there is difficult, evolving science behind our understanding.

~~~
bennylope
This is a question asked out of ignorant curiousity: what, if any, are the
intellectual property implications of releasing genomic information into the
public domain? Does doing so preclude the patenting yet un-patented genetic
sequences published in that genome?

~~~
bbgm
A number of human genomes are public domain via the human genome project and
1000 genomes project, etc. The part that needs to be resolved is the bit about
genes and disease implications. A recent case overturned Myriad's patents on
BRCA1 and BRCA2 [1]. On the other hand, I believe it's still OK to patent
signatures corresponding to a diagnostic etc (not 100% sure).

1\.
[http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2010/03/30/pigs-f...](http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2010/03/30/pigs-
fly-federal-court-invalidates-myriads-patent-claims/)

------
paradoja
The curious thing is that he uses Github... does he expect forks? Or patches?

~~~
nixme
TeMPOraL already forked and made improvements:
<https://github.com/TeMPOraL/dna/commits/master/>

_"Eyelids now close in proper way. Fixes issue #42."_

~~~
TeMPOraL
Actually, more action is going on scientist-mode-__experimental__ branch. Code
is little rusty, but workable with and possibilities of optimizations are
great.

EDIT:

BTW. Any ideas how to get continous integration working with it?

~~~
nixme
Are you picking random SNPs or using something like SNPedia?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Programmer's intuition ;).

I really like your question. Personally I value stories, creations, etc. in
which authors make multiple layers of "jokes" or references. Unfortunately,
I'm not good enough to know what letters I'm actually changing :(.

~~~
cariaso
I am. <https://github.com/cariaso/dna> is a fork for real commits based on
SNPedia.

~~~
joshu
Where are the unit tests?

------
aphyr
This brings a whole new meaning to "fork me on github".

------
wybo
All we need now is a free compiler, to turn it into life-code that runs on the
Universal machine...

Until that time agent-based modeling is the best we have :)

~~~
marxidad
You can buy a DNA synthesizer on eBay:
<http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=dna+synthesizer>

~~~
pjscott
Good luck finding an embryogenesis machine on eBay.

~~~
borism
there are plenty on match.com etc, though getting any of those will be out of
reach for most guys with DNA synthesizers :)

------
abhikshah
The Personal Genome Project [personalgenomes.org] is aiming to recruit 100,000
people to publicly release their DNA sequence and medical data. The website
currently has phenotype and medical history data and genotyping data for the
first ten participants who are all well-known scientist.

------
pella
more genomes:

"These are the 57 public genomes. They are from real people who've chosen to
share their data to help all of us learn more about our genomes."

<http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Genomes>

