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> Dna samples should sort of be viewed as banking information. Actually, because your DNA is yours for life it should be kept far MORE secure than your banking

by Real_S 8y ago

> Dna samples should sort of be viewed as banking information. Actually, because your DNA is yours for life it should be kept far MORE secure than your banking information. You can always change your bank account! To your other points, this is already being attempted in some countries. Imagine getting a bad "social credit" score because you were born with DNA unfavorable to your government.

jghn 8y ago
The problem with this is that all it takes is a relative to narrow things down tremendously so you could protect your DNA with Fort Knox and it wouldn’t really matter if your near-ish family did not
- Real_S 8y ago
  Your family only shares part of your genome. Even if you have full sequence data on both parents, you don't have anything near full information about the child. With siblings you would have less information, and the information gained from distant relatives becomes astonishingly small the farther you go. Don't assume that your DNA is fully compromised just because someone in your family has surrendered it. I work to apply encryption directly to DNA molecules, the Fort Knox of DNA data security ;)
  - jghn 8y ago
    And my background is in genomic analysis. There's not nearly as much variation as you're describing here.
inciampati 8y ago
Your DNA is barely yours. It's all shared with a lot of other people. You have only a handful (~100) private mutations that could really be called "yours", which is moot next to the six billion base pairs that make up the rest of your genome. Now yes, the unique combination of DNA that is in your genome is virtually impossible to be shared with anyone else. But, you are not going to be able to precisely and completely reconstruct it. Even the human reference has dozens of remaining gaps. Nobody really knows exactly what is in their own genome, and every reconstruction is based on sharing with other humans, so the idea of ownership is somewhat strange to me.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  Most songs are largely the same chords and notes, but that doesn't mean that any particular assemblage those isn't something that could be identifiable, unique, and expressive in a in an interestingly different way. You can't quantify what is ultimately going to be expressed as qualities by counting the numbers of genes that may be different; it doesn't take that many bits to make you likely to ultimately stay unique for any length of future human history.

by Real_S 8y ago

jghn 8y ago

The problem with this is that all it takes is a relative to narrow things down tremendously so you could protect your DNA with Fort Knox and it wouldn’t really matter if your near-ish family did not

Real_S 8y ago
Your family only shares part of your genome. Even if you have full sequence data on both parents, you don't have anything near full information about the child. With siblings you would have less information, and the information gained from distant relatives becomes astonishingly small the farther you go. Don't assume that your DNA is fully compromised just because someone in your family has surrendered it. I work to apply encryption directly to DNA molecules, the Fort Knox of DNA data security ;)
- jghn 8y ago
  And my background is in genomic analysis. There's not nearly as much variation as you're describing here.

inciampati 8y ago

Your DNA is barely yours. It's all shared with a lot of other people. You have only a handful (~100) private mutations that could really be called "yours", which is moot next to the six billion base pairs that make up the rest of your genome. Now yes, the unique combination of DNA that is in your genome is virtually impossible to be shared with anyone else. But, you are not going to be able to precisely and completely reconstruct it. Even the human reference has dozens of remaining gaps. Nobody really knows exactly what is in their own genome, and every reconstruction is based on sharing with other humans, so the idea of ownership is somewhat strange to me.

pessimizer 8y ago
Most songs are largely the same chords and notes, but that doesn't mean that any particular assemblage those isn't something that could be identifiable, unique, and expressive in a in an interestingly different way. You can't quantify what is ultimately going to be expressed as qualities by counting the numbers of genes that may be different; it doesn't take that many bits to make you likely to ultimately stay unique for any length of future human history.