4 ms·
It's not possible to do it anonymously?
by jeff18 16y ago
It's not possible to do it anonymously?
- jacquesm 16y agoI'm really not sure on how to make this even more clear, but your DNA is your identity, so when you give it to someone they have your identity and no amount of anonymization is going to change that. All you're missing is the metadata of 'name, date of birth, social security number' and so on. But that's just a system we've placed on top of 'who you are', which is your genes. Your fingerprint, your retina scan, your full lifes history, nothing in that list will identify you as good as your DNA does. So once you have someones DNA you can reconnect it with the rest of the information at any point in the future by simply checking to see where that DNA turns up again, including fractions of it in your descendants. You can't really anonymize it.
- chronomex 16y agoSo do identical twins count for one person?
- jacquesm 16y agoAnd so do clones, from a genetic point of view. So if you and your identical twin brother or sister are both going to apply to 23andme for an analysis you should get back the same results, and if your identical twin brother or sister commits a murder and hightails it to zanzibar you are in a lot of trouble if their dna is found at the crimescene and you happened to be in the neighbourhood. The number of identical twins is low enough that for the larger part of this discussion you can leave them out of the equation, they're the exception that confirms the rule, the differences in DNA are very subtle, and afaik will not be readily detected in a normal analysis.
- thirdusername 16y agoIdentical twins don't have the same DNA. Random link of Google: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/health/11real.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/health/11real.html
- araneae 16y agoTrue, but not every cell in your body has the same DNA either. Mutations happen with every cell replication.
- borism 16y agonot with every cell replication. that would certainly be pathological!
- jacquesm 16y agoI think you misread the point GP is making he is suggesting that because identical twins have the same DNA (more so than other people says the article linked) according to my logic they must be the same person, whereas it is obvious they are not. Of course they are not, but for 99.6% of humanity the rule that your DNA is (very) unique holds true, and for identical twins even if their DNA is even more similar it is not 100% the same. Clones (which do not exist (yet, or at least, human clones)) are the other exception.
- infinite8s 16y agoClones won't have identical DNA for the same reason that twins don't.
- crocowhile 16y agoThose are epigenetics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics ) differeces. DNA sequence is identical in identical twins.