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Techniques used to read DNA only read short segments, from which larger segments are inferred. Not surprisingly, the results are not reliable. Feed the unreli
by devereaux 8y ago
Techniques used to read DNA only read short segments, from which larger segments are inferred.
Not surprisingly, the results are not reliable.
Feed the unreliable result into any classification algorithm, and you still get unreliably results (actually I was expecting worse)
Not only that, but you only read small parts- SNPs. So there is no bijection; just a rough correspondence. On the bright side, it's good for privacy.
- virusduck 8y agoI think you underestimate the quality and power of short read sequencing. Most well-designed sequence-based genotyping assays take into account the length of the read and are easy to read out. (You are thinking of issues with copy number variation and perhaps assembly of longer genes, which do have issues). The sticky part is the analysis--how realiable are your databases and your algorithm for representing the mix of SNPs and INDELs as %European...that is the question.
- klmr 8y ago> Techniques used to read DNA only read short segments, from which larger segments are inferred. I think you’re describing short-read sequencing here but this isn’t what any of these services does. They do microarray genotyping rather than sequencing. And in neither case is there “inference”. True there’s something called imputation but it works quite differently and I don’t think (though I don’t know) that 23andme uses it for ancestry. I’m also not sure what you mean by “bijection” in this context.