

Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art - abbottry
http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2013/02/making-your-dna-into-art/

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kurtfunai
I think the idea of DNA portraits are pretty cool. Could make for a cute
(albeit pricey) family portrait.

Is this service affiliated with DNA11? This service seems very similar, right
down to sizes, pricing, and colour options.

They also provide DNA canvas art. ( <https://www.dna11.com> )

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abbottry
They are not associated, although yes they are quite similar. DNA11 (a cool
service) is really focused on just a business around selling art, while Kishan
has bigger plans -- art is just a logical first step in visualizations.

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prayag
This is such a well written post.

"Design by definition is the study of how people emotionally respond to an
experience."

This is one of the most concise definitions of design I have come across.

I wish I could've seen a sample of what I am buying but the idea is awesome.

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demian
It's interesting to see how the word "Design" is getting a more and more
specific definition related to people and cognition.

As an engineer, I'm starting to be forced to call my designs "engineering
designs", because people already associate "design" only with
visual/industrial/interaction design.

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warech
As personalized medicine becomes more mainstream, it will be important to use
accurate terminology in general overviews like OP's website. For example,
23andme does not provide DNA sequencing. Instead, they evaluate samples
against a comprehensive panel of small nucleotide polymorphisms. This
"fingerprinting" is informative and actionable, but not technically
sequencing. In the same way, I doubt whether Genetik Ink will actually "take
your DNA, sequence it, and turn it into an artistic representation" for <$500
(full genome sequencing is still $5000+, though dropping quickly in cost).

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kishb87
That is a good point. What we do is Sanger sequencing. This is sequencing of
up to 500bp of DNA and not the whole genome. This type of sequencing is much
more affordable.

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jostmey
I guess this is a cool business idea. The science of decoding the genome into
useful information is still in its infancy (I think). This means that right
now having your genome sequence is of limited use because there will so much
of your genome that we don't understand yet (again, I could be mistaken).

These individuals have found a way take this developing technology and sell
it. Kudos to them.

Does anyone know what type of sequencing technology they are using? Would the
authors care to share?

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kishb87
We are using Sanger sequencing technology.

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a_bonobo
Is there any specific reason why you use Sanger instead of, let's say,
Illumina?

Because in my experience Sanger is slower and more expensive than Illumina or
any of the other 3rd-gen-sequencers...

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cing
The unspoken story here is that Science Exchange is more than just a resource
for scientists. It also lowers the entry barrier for scientific start-ups.

I suspect that Kishan doesn't have access to a sequencer himself, he just
proxies the sample to one of the SNP Genotyping services on Science Exchange
(<https://www.scienceexchange.com/services/snp-genotyping>).

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allsystemsgo
This has been around for a long time. You can't really confirm that it really
is your DNA, since DNA can be cut in a variety of ways.

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elizabethiorns
Just found out you can do it for your dog's DNA as well!

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kishb87
Yes so far we can create a portrait of your dog and soon we will be able to
make cat portraits as well.

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endgame
Oh, they talk big about communicating with the patient. But what they actually
want to do is take some of the _most private data I could ever provide_ and
make a PICTURE out of it.

Uhh, thanks?

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kishb87
You bring up a good point. We have a privacy policy in which our lab does not
know the name of the customer through the entire process ensuring
confidentiality. We also delete your DNA after 30 days when your guarantee
expires. Finally to ensure your identity protection, we do not sequence your
entire DNA. We only sequence a portion. You can think of this as only having
the first four digits of a credit card. To actually have an even better idea,
imagine only having one digit of your credit card. That's the amount of DNA
that is sequenced in respect to the entire human genome. When taking these
measures into consideration, we believe the issue of personal identification
becomes non-relevant.

