4 ms·
I'm a computational biologist at a company that has briefly explored this space. The challenge to lifestyle optimization is that current genetic information is
by biomcgary 8y ago
I'm a computational biologist at a company that has briefly explored this space. The challenge to lifestyle optimization is that current genetic information is very limited in its utility. Either genetic variants have very little impact on health/disease phenotype, are very rare, or are not actionable. Consequently, the people in the general population will not have variants where they can take steps that will lead to a noticeable impact.
There are other areas of personalized medicine that are likely to have much higher impact, e.g., personalized drug responses. A well-understood application is Warfarin dosing, but a large number of drugs with bad side-effects are candidates for screening (and you only need to screen a smaller population of sick people looking for an optimal treatment).