
23andme: Evil Or The Way Of The Future? - nickb
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/17/23andme-evil-or-the-way-of-the-future/
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jaed
Navigenics (<http://www.navigenics.com>) is a KPCB-funded biotech that does
something similar.

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rms
$999 is way cheap for 23andme to be selling this, the microarrays cost $650
each before they are analyzed. As per a Techcrunch comment, I suspect they are
subsidizing or selling below cost which will probably work out because of the
rapidly falling costs in this area.

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aswanson
What materials are those arrays built out of? Do they require any special
(laser trimmed) components? Special lithography? I smell an industry ripe to
be commoditized by a startup.

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rms
I'm not sure what it actually takes to manufacture them -- there's definitely
some lithography that goes into it but I don't know much beyond that. You
might be able to convert an existing microprocessor plant into a DNA
microarray plant but i don't really know.

This is the one that I believe 23andme is purchasing in bulk -- or, at least
it is the highest end microarray sold by the company 23andme gets their arrays
from. <http://www.illumina.com/pagesnrn.ilmn?ID=70>

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zach
Here's the NY Times article which is currently a broken link in the post:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html?pagewanted=a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html?pagewanted=all)

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timr
23andMe must be paying out the nose for PR. There are at least 2 other well-
funded companies in this space, and I don't see _those_ folks getting features
in the New York Times....

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rms
They have also presented the information in the best way I have ever seen such
genetic information presented. This alone makes their product more appealing
and more interesting to journalists. Take a look at the copy on this page --
<https://www.23andme.com/gen101/variation/speed/> \-- it's damn good copy.

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timr
True. They've got a couple of science writers on staff, and I'm impressed with
their sense of style.

Still, that kind of stuff just doesn't explain a feature article in the New
York Times. DeCODE is the big fish in this area, and I've heard next to
nothing in the media about them. This seems like a blatant case of good PR.

(with the obvious caveat concerning Google and Sergey and Sergey's wife, of
course)

