
Why you’ll likely have your DNA sequenced in 5 years - jordhy
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/22/dnanexus-structure-data-2012/
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mattwrench
We may be capable of sequencing DNA cheaply enough for the average consumer,
but what's the point? Issues like the missing heritability problem and an
incomplete understanding of protein folding show we lack a full comprehension
of the information DNA tells us. Cancer-killing bacteriophages are still years
from being relevant as a treatment for the general public.

The Human Genome Project has yet to provide substantial medical advances.
Genetic sequencing only seems useful to look for diseases with an explicit
genetic link like Huntington's, and many people aren't going to want to know
they have diseases like that. Otherwise genetic sequencing seems as useful as
a full-body scan.

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ABrandt
Although everything you say is true, there _is_ a very clear benefit of
genetic testing that exists today. Many drug interactions have a strong
genetic link. Take the common blood thinning drug warfarin for example. It's
considered a medical best practice to prescribe this drug to patient's with a
variety of heart problems (irregular heartbeat, history of heart attack, etc).
A single dosage has wildly different effects on different patients however.
The same dosage can cause fatal bleeding in one patient, while in another
patient have no effect at all. Without genetics, the proper dosage is a crap
shoot. With genetics, it's an exact science (as it should be).

And this is just one single example. Research is revealing more genetic-drug
links all the time with relatively small sample sizes. Genetic sequencing may
not cure every disease like we were promised ~10 years ago, but it is saving
lives and is essential to the advancement of medicine.

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jballanc
This really is the key point. In graduate school I worked along side many
individuals with close ties to the pharmaceutical industry, and many had very
similar stories to tell...

Getting a drug approved is an interesting process. Not only do you have to
prove your drug is not harmful, not only do you have to prove that it does
what it's supposed to, you also have to prove that it works better than all
the available alternatives. I heard numerous stories where a drug would go to
trial, and for some subset of the trial population it would be a miracle cure.
However, the way the current approval process runs, those miracles have to be
averaged out with the rest of the population, and often the end result would
be "it's not better than existing drugs: denied!"

Of course, scientists being the curious type quickly figured out that what
they were seeing was the consequence of genetics. Have a certain variant of
gene X? Then this is a miracle cure. But only 10% of the population has gene
X, so on the whole this drug doesn't _appear_ to be better than the
alternatives.

The problem is, the FDA doesn't know how to approve drugs that only work for
people with a specific variant of gene X. Mostly, it's a chicken and egg
problem: most drug trials don't include genetic profiling, because it would be
wasted money since the FDA doesn't consider genetic profiling, because most
drug trials don't include genetic profiling.

If sequencing becomes cheap enough that it can be included as part of the
standard drug trial process, this could all change. Personalized medicine is
the future.

 _Edit_ : Interestingly, though the name escapes me at the moment, I _did_
hear of one drug that was approved for a specific gene variant. However, this
was only because that gene variant was particularly prevalent in African
American men, and demographic data _is_ collected during the trial process. I
recall there were a lot of upset scientists regarding this outcome, though,
because conflating race with genetics is dangerous and irresponsible. There
might be an 80% correlation (and even that might be on the high side), but
that implies that there are non-African American males who could benefit but
won't get the drug, and African American males that will get the drug even
though it has no beneficial effect...

 _Edit, post-Google_ : Well, that was rather easy to find --
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/health/24drugs.html>

~~~
jesseendahl
BiDil actually is not a great example, because... "The trial, however, was
conducted only in African American patients, and the results, therefore, give
the impression that BiDil works only in African Americans. This is not the
case. The trial investigators themselves concede that BiDil will work in
people regardless of race." The drug company just pitched it that way to get
it approved by the FDA.

Source: Kahn J (2005) From disparity to difference: How race-specific
medicines may undermine policies to address inequalities in health care. South
Calif Interdiscip Law J 15: 105–130.

[http://128.125.42.47/why/students/orgs/ilj/assets/docs/15-1%...](http://128.125.42.47/why/students/orgs/ilj/assets/docs/15-1%20Kahn.pdf)

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jordhy
This might change our standard of living by giving us new insights into our
bodies. In less than a decade, living a healthy life will be about respecting
your particular genetics as opposed to just following a set of formulaic
guidelines.

After big data makes individual DNA sequencing possible, we'll be able to
start clustering results and then reverse engineer illnesses to find even more
risk factors and correlations between illness and ethnography. These are
potentially important achievements for the Pharma industry and governments
alike.

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trebor
Sequencing your DNA is of limited use since your phenotype is the expression
of your genetic code. And your phenotype may be the direct opposite of what
you are genetically predisposed to. Without knowledge of your phenotype the
mapping of your genome is less useful, and possibly counter productive.
(Better to eat methyl donors that toggle your genes, than to take DNA-tailored
drugs...)

A not-quite-layman's look at epigenetics can be gotten from the book,
Pottenger's Prophecy[1]. It has quite a lot of information and shouldn't be
skimmed (as much to myself, as to any with leanings toward skimming
everything). Those wanting more detail should check out the studies referenced
by the book.

    
    
      [1]:http://www.amazon.com/Pottengers-Prophecy-Resets-Wellness-Illness/dp/1935052330

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mylons
bioinformatics grinder here. sequencing dna is getting cheap enough, and there
are mutations that are known to be associated with specific disease and
cancer. these mutations can be found with sequencing, and a lot of them can be
treated with existing drugs/methods.

that said there's still quite a bit to learn about dna.

