
My 23andMe DNA Results - aneesh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/02/my-23andme-dna-results/
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rms
Yes, $1000 is a lot of money for that test. No, it is not incredibly useful.
We're in a period of time when DNA testing is mainly for early adopters.
However, the Moore's Law equivalent for DNA sequencing blows away the Moore's
Law for transistors: every year genetic sequencing has become cheaper by
tenfold.

23andme's disease risk indicators aren't overly meaningful, because they only
test for a few SNPs and true disease risk is made up of many SNPs and multi
nucleotide mutations and deletions, as well as levels of miRNA expression.
Many of the mutations are only studied in caucasians. For now, most genetic
tests are interesting rather than explicitly useful. Five or seven years from
now, after Google's 100,000 genome project is complete and you can get a whole
genome test for $1000, genetic testing will be very useful. Let's just hope
that the results of that study are completely public.

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tlrobinson
Is 23andMe's test for HIV resistance the same gene as your startup tests for?

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rms
That would make sense, though I thought they only tested for single nucleotide
polymorphisms and the HIV mutation in question is a 32 base pair deletion.

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moog
Social software with a 'how closely I'm related to you' feature would be
compelling. Social networks obviously apply, but how about when you exchange
emails with someone... wouldn't it be cool if it mentioned a common ancestor
in the footer? Oh, and on a dating site, automatically filter out all first
and second cousins!

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mixmax
maybe incestdating.com ?

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sungam
The limitation of SNP techniques is that the magnitude of association between
a particular allele and a disease have turned out to be rather low - in the
order of 1-2 times increased risk. This is virtually meaningless on an
individual level - for example if there is a 1:1000 risk of a particular
disease in the population and you have the risk allele you would still only
have a 1:500 risk of getting the condition.

A possible explanation for this is that that all of the alleles that are
tested in genome wide association studies are found relatively frequently in
the population - it may be that rare alleles exist that confer far greater
risk e.g. 10-100 increase and it is these that mediate the majority of the
inherited risk of a condition. These rare alleles could not be detected by a
microarray based approach but would be identified by massive resequencing. A
preliminary resequencing effort is already underway:
<http://www.1000genomes.org/> and within the next few years whole genome
resequencing on an individual basis will become feasible with massively
paralell techniques such as Selexa.

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xirium
About 10 years ago, I considered the possibility of a gadget that connected to
a home computer and allowed you to perform genetic testing at home - without
revealing information to third parties. They'd be a large market for such a
device. Unfortunately, it isn't feasible yet but it will be.

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aswanson
What are the inhibiting cost factors?

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rms
For SNP testing, the cost of micro-arrays and micro-array reading machines are
way too much for at home use. Whole genome testing right now is astronomically
more expensive than SNP testing.

However, if the rapidly decreasing cost of genetic sequencing keeps up, then
it will eventually be possible to create at home genome sequencers that feed
into your home computer to analyze the data. The privacy paranoid will have to
pay a significant premium for this privilege.

Also, a DNA extraction machine would have to be bundled with the at home
sequencer, ideally in one machine, and DNA extraction machines are also too
expensive for home use. Without a machine, DNA extraction involves proprietary
solution combined with various steps of heating and centrifuging.

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apathy
A fluidics station is not cheap, and neither is the rest of the typical Affy
rig (and Illumina is worse), but having set up more than a few, I have to tell
you, the cost of the components isn't actually very great. (As in, the parts
and labor. The price paid to the company is most assuredly huge.)

If there were actually demand for it, someone could throw together the
equivalent of an open-source array reader kit for (guesing, but not without
basis in fact) $10K or so. God knows it's faster and easier to work around
Affy or Illumina's junkware with R than it is to get anything done with their
binaries... but that would be silly because who outside of a hospital or lab
_really_ has that much use for one?

But sequencing-by-synthesis methods that can use WGA on small samples are the
key to a truly accessible and useful map of an individual's genome. I don't
really care how my genome differs from Craig Venter's; I want to know how it
differs from itself as I get older, I want to know how it differs from itself
as I am exposed to environmental factors, and I want to know how it differs
from the baseline for my 'eigen-ancestry' in terms of disease risk.

There are so many statistical piles of shit that have already been stepped in
(particularly WRT linkage analysis, but I'm sure we'll eventually see a good
laffer from a GWAS of some sort now that they're all the rage) that I'd really
rather have the tools to work on my own, thankyouverymuch...

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andr
This opens up a whole new level of narcissism. "My DNA is better than yours."
:)

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crescendo
And discrimination.

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slackerIII
I find this kind of thing fascinating, but I'm surprised no one has commented
on the health insurance angle here. I wonder how long it will be before
"discount" health insurance is available if you agree to take this test. All
kinds of fun implications once we go down that road...

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TheTarquin
Oh man, I had no idea something like this existed! Shades of Gattica, but SO
SO cool!

Also reminds me of Dawkin's writing on a "Moore's Law" for genetics, basically
saying that there's an exponential equation describing number of genes
sequenced for a fixed cost.

Guess we've gotten at least to the point where $1000 buys one (apparently)
meaningful information about your genetic structure.

Methinks I'll wait until the cost has fallen by another order of magnitude or
so . . .

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seshagiri
I think this might be a good chance for family members of people who suffer
from rare and un-curable diseases to see if they too are susceptible. Other
than that I think 100$ might have been a good price for this vanity.

