7 ms·

What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

78 points by philipkd 16y ago

larrik 16y ago
This is posted on the very same day I heard from 23andMe received my and my wife's samples. Spooky. (I actually bought the kits on DNA day last year, and just haven't gotten around to sending them in until now, so this really is weird for me)
- nitrogen 16y ago
  Considering how many people on HN are 23andMe customers, it's statistically quite likely that at least one HN reader would get an e-mail from 23andMe on the same day a related HN article is posted :).
endtime 16y ago
I've done 23andMe as well. If anyone's curious I'm happy to answer questions. Without prompting, I don't have much to add other than that the relative finder doesn't seem to work quite as well as I'd hoped. I do have one distant cousin on 23andMe, and it did find her, but assigned higher confidence/probability/whatever to a few tens of people who mostly seem not to be cousins. This might not be their fault - I imagine a very small fraction of the population is even on 23andMe - but I still haven't found any long-lost cousins yet. Edit: On reflection, this is probably because I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, and we have a relatively small gene pool and relatively cyclic ancestor graphs (at least when considered undirected). If your ethnic background is broader/less insular then the relative finder will probably work better for you.
- acangiano 16y ago
  I had better luck with my relative finder. I find out I was related to a few people and got in touch with them. One of these cousins is one of the most famous people in America, but I cannot disclose any other information as I respect their desire for privacy. Overall, the experience has provided me with plenty of infotainment. Well worth the $99 I paid.
  - khafra 16y ago
    I wonder if your famous relative regrets putting his genome on 23andMe.
    - acangiano 16y ago
      Well, given that he/she discovered me as a cousin, I highly doubt that. :-P
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
- Maciek416 16y ago
  I've had better luck with relative finder as well. My very first contact was able to trace his great-great-grandparents roots to a village that is only 30 minutes away or so from my Dad's ancestor's town. This person is marked as a 5th cousin, so I'd consider that pretty compelling. Regarding your "mostly seem not to be cousins" comment, I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. If you look at their FAQ, they claim that it's fairly accurate that if someone is marked as a relative, that's a relative. The degree of relation may be off by a generation or two, but it's there. I find it interesting how many people, even those who sign up for the service and enable visibility on relative finder, heck, even those who fill out their profiles with surnames and extra information, either don't respond to contact requests or entirely dismiss relations dubbed by the system "likely 3rd cousin" as "impossible". At the 6th, 5th, and even 4th cousin levels, especially going into the past with typically large families, we are talking about fairly large networks of people. I see a lot of folks say things like "I can trace my roots back 10 generations", when they really just mean one single paternal line, for example. How can you be sure that someone didn't jump in the hay with someone else in secret that one summer in 1807, or that some forgotten sister of a great-great-grandparent went off to America for 5 years before returning to her homeland, etc? With such large numbers of people, the likeliness of having huge numbers of cousins goes way up. For example, look how many hops it takes to get to your 4th cousin: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4th+cousin http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4th+cousin Can we all vouch for all the surnames, brothers and sisters, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc in a relation even as "close" as this?
  - endtime 16y ago
    Well, I can trace back 3-4 generations, at least in terms of surnames and maiden names, and none of the people I've talked to are even from the same parts of Europe or know of any relatives with the same last names (with one exception for Miller, which is a very common name). I've talked to several Ukrainians, one Portuguese, and one Argentinian - whereas my family is English, Dutch, German, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian. As far as I know I didn't have any Ukrainian ancestors, at least not in the last few generations. >I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. Well, I consider someone to be a cousin based solely on our most recent common ancestor. If someone happens to have similar genes to me but we haven't shared an ancestor for 5,000 years then that person's not a cousin for any useful definition of the word. It also might be that Asheknazi Jews, as a historically small/insular community with, therefore, a smaller gene pool, have a different experience with the relative finder than people with less, uh, incestuous (broadly speaking) family trees. Edit: Just logged into 23andMe and saw this relevant thread: https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/ https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/. So I guess my speculation was right, and my concerns should be disregarded if you aren't part of a similarly small population.
- elizabrock 16y ago
  I have nearly a thousand relatives on Relative Finder. After connecting with a few of my "closer" cousins, I came to find out that we have Ashkenazi jewish origins. According to one of my cousins, the relative finder is quite a bit different/better for her family members that don't have Ashkenazi heritage.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  How far are you from Genghis Khan? Or was it some other startup who determines it?
  - endtime 16y ago
    I can find Genghis Khan's haplogroups, but I don't see a way to compare my DNA to his.
GvS 16y ago
Interesting service. Anyone know something similar in Europe?
- shazow 16y ago
  Last I checked, 23andMe shipped to Europe (with additional shipping fees).
  - prr 16y ago
    I had mine done last year. You'll also need to factor in the DHL shipping fees for returning your sample (30 Pounds from the UK, over and above whatever they charged for shipping it to you)
- pinguar 16y ago
  Actually, I got mine shipped to Turkey and they also included a pre-paid shipping label to the package.
- prawn 16y ago
  I've used them from Australia, FWIW. They shipped out the spit tubes and postage-paid Fedex bags in which to return them.
tibbon 16y ago
I'm glad I did it, and the results didn't freak me out/scare me or lead to any massive revelations. For the $100 I paid, it was worth it. For the $500 that they normally charge, I felt it was too much. The stuff about family origin/history was pretty boring for me and just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come. Both lines from Europe? You don't say... But for someone who doesn't know that they are 100% European, it could be interesting to see what else is in your background.
- Maciek416 16y ago
  The health results didn't freak me out either (for the most part, I got lucky with nothing unexpected or terrible). On the other hand, I like yourself also thought I had a "boring white Polish as far back as anyone can remember" background. Instead, I got some rather awesome results on the ancestry front that changed a lot of what I know about my background. The results in both haplogroups are interesting (if a bit broad) in their own right, but what really blew my mind was the sheer numbers of very close cousins I have amongst "neighboring" or not-so-neighboring ethnicities/religions/countries. There's a definite history in my family of "running away from the Russians", and so it's fascinating to find out just how much of those Russians (and other people round the 'Bloc) are in fact directly related to me by only a couple generations.
- rflrob 16y ago
  > For the $500 that they normally charge, I felt it was too much. Some time this year, they seem to have put their prices at $199, down from $499. Personally, I'm waiting until whole-genome resequencing is down to about $300 from a commercial outlet. I don't anticipate this being the case in the next 5 years, at least, but it's not like my DNA will be changing any time soon.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come What's boring about being white? Sorry, but this attitude strikes me as being nonsense political correctness. I'm quite sure that whatever race or culture your ancestors come from, there's plenty to be interested in on a personal level at the very least.
Desireco 16y ago
Results are fairly underwhelming, and fairly inaccurate in terms of predictions. I am dissappointed with them honestly and I wouldn't recommend people to do it because it is not worth the money. Maybe in the future when they can predict things and tell you something useful. To clarify, my wife has a genetic mutation which is fairly important and life threatening and from their report I wouldn't even guess something like that is there. And it is because their reporting is not good.
ghshephard 16y ago
I managed to get one of those $100 23andMe deals, so I bought Christmas presents for my mother, brother, sister in law, niece and nephew (Actually, I bought them wayyyy in advance on DNA Day - couldn't resist a great deal). About 7 weeks later, everybody's profile came online, and the relative finder instantly identified all of us and our probable relationship to each other (it was correct, in all cases). It's interesting that I share more genetic similarity with my brother, than I do with my mother, even excluding the Y chromosome. It took a bit of thinking before my brother came up with the example of identical twins, who would share almost 100% DNA. As far as cousins - I have about 100 relatives discovered through the relative finder - lots, and lots, and lots of 5th and 4th cousins, and a few 3rd cousins. No second or first cousins yet. I originally purchased my kit about 4 or 5 years ago for $1000, so the $99 cost is a huge jump in such a short period of time. It's important to note that 23andMe doesn't do a full DNA Scan, but just samples it in important locations known as SNPs. Watching the trends on singularityhub.com, I'm guessing that a full DNA scan will be available to the individual consumer for $1000 in about five or six years.
- nollidge 16y ago
  Even with a full DNA scan, SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms - one letter mutations) are mostly still what they'll be looking at. The difference is that instead of probing the genome for a million or so specifically predetermined SNPs (most of which are hardly well-understood), now you'll have every single base identified, which means that when some new important SNP is discovered, you (probably) won't have to get retested - you just pull out the old data.
- rms 16y ago
  >I'm guessing that a full DNA scan will be available to the individual consumer for $1000 in about five or six years. Should be faster than that. I'd put even money down at it being available in three years, probably even 2.5 or 2 years. Genomic sequencing has been one of the fastest Moore's Law analogues in history.
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    the shotgun sequencing (specifically the assembly stage) directly relies on the advances of the original Moore's Law
jcookster 16y ago
Looks like one of their competitors (pathway) has posted about an open position for a developer http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255109 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255109
axod 16y ago
Never understood why people pay money for this. It seems crazy to me.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  It seems crazy to be curious about your genes? Could you elaborate on why?
  - axod 16y ago
    Few reasons... * I don't think the tech is mature enough to be 100% reliable * It'll probably just worry people more than anything. * Doctors are trained. Some guy getting this thing isn't. I think it's a hypercondriacs dream.
    - radu_floricica 16y ago
      Well, for example: * It's fun. It really is. Even the part about the Parkinson, after you get over it. * You're pretty much subsidizing a new industry. * There is a chance you can actually use this. Either if you actually have a rare disease gene, or if you're a carrier. In any case, I intend to take a printout to my next medical visit.
      - axod 16y ago
        > In any case, I intend to take a printout to my next medical visit. I'm sure doctors hate this. I'm of the opinion we should leave trained professionals to do their job.
        radu_floricica 16y ago
        Hate?! Trust me, I have no intention of pestering him/her with every minute detail of the chart. But I do know I have a (somewhat) higher risk for prostate cancer in advanced age, and I sure want to have a talk with him about ways to mitigate it. I was under the impression that is pretty much his job... But I think I understand a bit of what you mean. For example, my results lists obesity at "normal", with a whopping 60% chance. Same way, one slightly raised chance of a certain disease may not mean much when compared to a host of other illnesses with much higher baseline chances. As it happens though, prostate cancer is already high on the list, so I do intent to fully make use of the information.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- ihodes 16y ago
  EDIT for history: [The original comment was by edw##, regarding the strength of his ancestor's sperm. It wasn't a bad post, I just felt it was inaccurate/confusing.] Though poetic, that's not at all how you should look at it. Those sperm carry the same DNA. That DNA is the pattern your proteins are crafted with. That pattern (in conjunction with the environment you live in) is what determines how "sturdy" you are. You are not that sperm. Think of your DNA as the bash program, and the ENV variables as a sort of control flow (like in many programs). The end result of the computation is you. The "strength" of your father's (and forefathers') sperm is important, sure, but from an evolutionary perspective. Those 100,000,000 sperm were, for all intents and purposes, the same. 23andme isn't about telling you what you already know–though that's certainly an interesting confirmation–it's about telling you what you don't know. Or at least giving you an idea about it, and the raw data that largely determines how you turned out (given your env vars).
JacobAldridge 16y ago
Combining two recent HN discussions here - this one, and one yesterday on the difficulty in getting insurance in the US (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2247560 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2247560) What are the consequences (immediate, or further down the track), not so much of using a service like 23andMe (I imagine it will be a fairly standard part of medical testing in X generations) but of posting on your blog that you're (to paraphrase) 1.90x as likely to contract Parkinson's?
- Maciek416 16y ago
  One simple immediate consequence may be that you cannot answer a question like "do you have any reason to believe that you may be at risk for XYZ" anymore without potentially having to rely on a result that may or may not have statistical significance -- or which you may have misunderstood. A lot of 23andme reports are in the form of "if you are east asian and have the following genotype for SNP rsXXXXXX, you have a 3% chance of developing condition XYZ". Personal genomics services like 23andme are going out there and saying that SNPs are pretty reliable, but the reality for some conditions and traits may still be fuzzy as more data comes in. There may be as-yet undiscovered SNPs that have a bigger effect on your cancer risk than the ones their v3 chip happens to cover, for example, and just having a 1 or even a dozen SNPs may not be enough for a clear picture. On the other hand, an insurance company might find it risky enough to deny you coverage. Nobody knows how that will shake out. In the future, if a given insurance provider knows you have purchased a service like this, they also can then figure out which SNPs you know your genotypes for (it would be fairly trivial for any insurance company to find out which 950,000 or so SNPs 23andme tests for), and can then craft a survey form asking about these specific traits. Many people will likely still try the service anyway because they'd rather know, pro-actively address certain issues, and risk the insurance game, than not know at all. [EDIT: Apologies for not having read your question all that clearly. Just assume the above applies to "admitting you've used the service in public"]
  - silencio 16y ago
    > potentially having to rely on a result that may or may not have statistical significance I can't stress this enough. I've had a bunch of friends buy the 23andme kit while it was on sale recently because they were interested in my results from a while ago, and their buildup to getting their own results was "what if it tells me I'm never going to have x?!" and things like that. Kind of frustrating to explain how it works. 23andme put me at average to low risk of a few things they test for that I have in real life. One of the more frustrating things to read was that 23andme declared from preliminary asthma research that I was at lower than average to average odds, when in my past I've had severe asthma I've even been hospitalized for. On the flip side of things, 23andme determined my risk of melanoma from genetics is 0.1% (as compared to 1.7% average). But I live in Los Angeles and I get sunburnt/suntanned multiple times a year, not to mention the sheer number of hours I spend outdoors in general. I regularly track skin changes and visit a dermatologist once in a while because new spots and changes on my skin stress the hell out of me. I know my risk likely skyrockets past the 1.7% easily if you take my environment into account. Insurance companies already play this risk/percentage game anyway with lots of other information, and I don't think I see a big of a risk as people being denied insurance from testing like this. If anything, it means everyone can be more proactive and save money and lives in the end. (Of course, I am being pretty naively optimistic here...) I mean, I imagine that's what they're trying to do on some level when they send me pamphlets about STD testing and prenatal care in the mail every other week just because they know I'm a 20something female on birth control.
Jun8 16y ago
My big question is: does 23andMe get to keep the DNA data, what does the User Agreement say?
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  They give you the choice of either having them keep it - or throw it away. I had them keep it because they can then run further tests without needing my spit again.
bkrausz 16y ago
Well, my 23andMe results told me I was a Tay-Sachs carrier, and my parents already knew they both weren't, which brought up some interesting questions on both my past and future. Fortunately I'm more likely to assume tests are wrong than my parent's cheated, but it was the future thing I was more concerned with. I later found out I was part of the 23andMe data mixup[1], so the results I had for a week actually weren't mine. Kind of killed my faith in the system, and when I got my actual results they were quite boring. At the very least it makes a good story, worth the $99 in my book. [1] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/Sample-swaps-at-23andMe:-a-cautionary-tale http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/Sample-swaps-at-23...
kenjackson 16y ago
Has 23andMe done any targeted work w/ adoption sites and such? I know from talking to adopted friends, they often don't have info on family medical history. This would be really useful for them.
RK 16y ago
Didn't get mine done, but both of my parents had theirs done. My dad's was pretty much as expected, as far as ancestry (my grandmother is an avid genealogist). On my mom's side there is a lost of uncertainty about our ancestry. Of course, because you only see the mitochondrial DNA result for a female, its not as informative for someone who is probably a mix (like my mom). I think an admixture test will be the one that's really useful. My dad downloaded his raw data and is enlisting me to use some of the 3rd party tools out there to do some other comparisons, but I haven't really dug into it yet. Home bioinformatics...
cowmixtoo 16y ago
If you want to get more use out of the raw data 23andMe produces from your DNA sequencing I encourage everyone to check out this free / GPL'd Firefox plugin my company created. http://www.snptips.com/ http://www.snptips.com/
jeffthebear 16y ago
I got on the deal for $100 on DNA day and found that most of the results I got back were interesting and cool to show my friends but it didn't change my life/habits in anyway. Most of the 23andMe's data is currently targeted for people of European descent and there isn't a whole lot of data on people of African and Asian descent in their database but even many of the European traits have varying confidence markers based on genetic data we have available today. I am hoping that much more data will be coming in the future but at the moment I wouldn't accept the results as gospel.

78 points by philipkd 16y ago

This is posted on the very same day I heard from 23andMe received my and my wife's samples. Spooky. (I actually bought the kits on DNA day last year, and just haven't gotten around to sending them in until now, so this really is weird for me)

nitrogen 16y ago
Considering how many people on HN are 23andMe customers, it's statistically quite likely that at least one HN reader would get an e-mail from 23andMe on the same day a related HN article is posted :).

endtime 16y ago

I've done 23andMe as well. If anyone's curious I'm happy to answer questions. Without prompting, I don't have much to add other than that the relative finder doesn't seem to work quite as well as I'd hoped. I do have one distant cousin on 23andMe, and it did find her, but assigned higher confidence/probability/whatever to a few tens of people who mostly seem not to be cousins. This might not be their fault - I imagine a very small fraction of the population is even on 23andMe - but I still haven't found any long-lost cousins yet. Edit: On reflection, this is probably because I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, and we have a relatively small gene pool and relatively cyclic ancestor graphs (at least when considered undirected). If your ethnic background is broader/less insular then the relative finder will probably work better for you.

acangiano 16y ago
I had better luck with my relative finder. I find out I was related to a few people and got in touch with them. One of these cousins is one of the most famous people in America, but I cannot disclose any other information as I respect their desire for privacy. Overall, the experience has provided me with plenty of infotainment. Well worth the $99 I paid.
- khafra 16y ago
  I wonder if your famous relative regrets putting his genome on 23andMe.
  - acangiano 16y ago
    Well, given that he/she discovered me as a cousin, I highly doubt that. :-P
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
Maciek416 16y ago
I've had better luck with relative finder as well. My very first contact was able to trace his great-great-grandparents roots to a village that is only 30 minutes away or so from my Dad's ancestor's town. This person is marked as a 5th cousin, so I'd consider that pretty compelling. Regarding your "mostly seem not to be cousins" comment, I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. If you look at their FAQ, they claim that it's fairly accurate that if someone is marked as a relative, that's a relative. The degree of relation may be off by a generation or two, but it's there. I find it interesting how many people, even those who sign up for the service and enable visibility on relative finder, heck, even those who fill out their profiles with surnames and extra information, either don't respond to contact requests or entirely dismiss relations dubbed by the system "likely 3rd cousin" as "impossible". At the 6th, 5th, and even 4th cousin levels, especially going into the past with typically large families, we are talking about fairly large networks of people. I see a lot of folks say things like "I can trace my roots back 10 generations", when they really just mean one single paternal line, for example. How can you be sure that someone didn't jump in the hay with someone else in secret that one summer in 1807, or that some forgotten sister of a great-great-grandparent went off to America for 5 years before returning to her homeland, etc? With such large numbers of people, the likeliness of having huge numbers of cousins goes way up. For example, look how many hops it takes to get to your 4th cousin: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4th+cousin http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4th+cousin Can we all vouch for all the surnames, brothers and sisters, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc in a relation even as "close" as this?
- endtime 16y ago
  Well, I can trace back 3-4 generations, at least in terms of surnames and maiden names, and none of the people I've talked to are even from the same parts of Europe or know of any relatives with the same last names (with one exception for Miller, which is a very common name). I've talked to several Ukrainians, one Portuguese, and one Argentinian - whereas my family is English, Dutch, German, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian. As far as I know I didn't have any Ukrainian ancestors, at least not in the last few generations. >I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. Well, I consider someone to be a cousin based solely on our most recent common ancestor. If someone happens to have similar genes to me but we haven't shared an ancestor for 5,000 years then that person's not a cousin for any useful definition of the word. It also might be that Asheknazi Jews, as a historically small/insular community with, therefore, a smaller gene pool, have a different experience with the relative finder than people with less, uh, incestuous (broadly speaking) family trees. Edit: Just logged into 23andMe and saw this relevant thread: https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/ https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/. So I guess my speculation was right, and my concerns should be disregarded if you aren't part of a similarly small population.
elizabrock 16y ago
I have nearly a thousand relatives on Relative Finder. After connecting with a few of my "closer" cousins, I came to find out that we have Ashkenazi jewish origins. According to one of my cousins, the relative finder is quite a bit different/better for her family members that don't have Ashkenazi heritage.
VladRussian 16y ago
How far are you from Genghis Khan? Or was it some other startup who determines it?
- endtime 16y ago
  I can find Genghis Khan's haplogroups, but I don't see a way to compare my DNA to his.

GvS 16y ago

Interesting service. Anyone know something similar in Europe?

shazow 16y ago
Last I checked, 23andMe shipped to Europe (with additional shipping fees).
- prr 16y ago
  I had mine done last year. You'll also need to factor in the DHL shipping fees for returning your sample (30 Pounds from the UK, over and above whatever they charged for shipping it to you)
pinguar 16y ago
Actually, I got mine shipped to Turkey and they also included a pre-paid shipping label to the package.
prawn 16y ago
I've used them from Australia, FWIW. They shipped out the spit tubes and postage-paid Fedex bags in which to return them.

tibbon 16y ago

I'm glad I did it, and the results didn't freak me out/scare me or lead to any massive revelations. For the $100 I paid, it was worth it. For the $500 that they normally charge, I felt it was too much. The stuff about family origin/history was pretty boring for me and just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come. Both lines from Europe? You don't say... But for someone who doesn't know that they are 100% European, it could be interesting to see what else is in your background.

Maciek416 16y ago
The health results didn't freak me out either (for the most part, I got lucky with nothing unexpected or terrible). On the other hand, I like yourself also thought I had a "boring white Polish as far back as anyone can remember" background. Instead, I got some rather awesome results on the ancestry front that changed a lot of what I know about my background. The results in both haplogroups are interesting (if a bit broad) in their own right, but what really blew my mind was the sheer numbers of very close cousins I have amongst "neighboring" or not-so-neighboring ethnicities/religions/countries. There's a definite history in my family of "running away from the Russians", and so it's fascinating to find out just how much of those Russians (and other people round the 'Bloc) are in fact directly related to me by only a couple generations.
rflrob 16y ago
> For the $500 that they normally charge, I felt it was too much. Some time this year, they seem to have put their prices at $199, down from $499. Personally, I'm waiting until whole-genome resequencing is down to about $300 from a commercial outlet. I don't anticipate this being the case in the next 5 years, at least, but it's not like my DNA will be changing any time soon.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come What's boring about being white? Sorry, but this attitude strikes me as being nonsense political correctness. I'm quite sure that whatever race or culture your ancestors come from, there's plenty to be interested in on a personal level at the very least.

Desireco 16y ago

Results are fairly underwhelming, and fairly inaccurate in terms of predictions. I am dissappointed with them honestly and I wouldn't recommend people to do it because it is not worth the money. Maybe in the future when they can predict things and tell you something useful. To clarify, my wife has a genetic mutation which is fairly important and life threatening and from their report I wouldn't even guess something like that is there. And it is because their reporting is not good.

ghshephard 16y ago

I managed to get one of those $100 23andMe deals, so I bought Christmas presents for my mother, brother, sister in law, niece and nephew (Actually, I bought them wayyyy in advance on DNA Day - couldn't resist a great deal). About 7 weeks later, everybody's profile came online, and the relative finder instantly identified all of us and our probable relationship to each other (it was correct, in all cases). It's interesting that I share more genetic similarity with my brother, than I do with my mother, even excluding the Y chromosome. It took a bit of thinking before my brother came up with the example of identical twins, who would share almost 100% DNA. As far as cousins - I have about 100 relatives discovered through the relative finder - lots, and lots, and lots of 5th and 4th cousins, and a few 3rd cousins. No second or first cousins yet. I originally purchased my kit about 4 or 5 years ago for $1000, so the $99 cost is a huge jump in such a short period of time. It's important to note that 23andMe doesn't do a full DNA Scan, but just samples it in important locations known as SNPs. Watching the trends on singularityhub.com, I'm guessing that a full DNA scan will be available to the individual consumer for $1000 in about five or six years.

nollidge 16y ago
Even with a full DNA scan, SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms - one letter mutations) are mostly still what they'll be looking at. The difference is that instead of probing the genome for a million or so specifically predetermined SNPs (most of which are hardly well-understood), now you'll have every single base identified, which means that when some new important SNP is discovered, you (probably) won't have to get retested - you just pull out the old data.
rms 16y ago
>I'm guessing that a full DNA scan will be available to the individual consumer for $1000 in about five or six years. Should be faster than that. I'd put even money down at it being available in three years, probably even 2.5 or 2 years. Genomic sequencing has been one of the fastest Moore's Law analogues in history.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  the shotgun sequencing (specifically the assembly stage) directly relies on the advances of the original Moore's Law

jcookster 16y ago

Looks like one of their competitors (pathway) has posted about an open position for a developer http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255109 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255109

axod 16y ago

Never understood why people pay money for this. It seems crazy to me.

randallsquared 16y ago
It seems crazy to be curious about your genes? Could you elaborate on why?
- axod 16y ago
  Few reasons... * I don't think the tech is mature enough to be 100% reliable * It'll probably just worry people more than anything. * Doctors are trained. Some guy getting this thing isn't. I think it's a hypercondriacs dream.
  - radu_floricica 16y ago
    Well, for example: * It's fun. It really is. Even the part about the Parkinson, after you get over it. * You're pretty much subsidizing a new industry. * There is a chance you can actually use this. Either if you actually have a rare disease gene, or if you're a carrier. In any case, I intend to take a printout to my next medical visit.
    - axod 16y ago
      > In any case, I intend to take a printout to my next medical visit. I'm sure doctors hate this. I'm of the opinion we should leave trained professionals to do their job.
      - radu_floricica 16y ago
        Hate?! Trust me, I have no intention of pestering him/her with every minute detail of the chart. But I do know I have a (somewhat) higher risk for prostate cancer in advanced age, and I sure want to have a talk with him about ways to mitigate it. I was under the impression that is pretty much his job... But I think I understand a bit of what you mean. For example, my results lists obesity at "normal", with a whopping 60% chance. Same way, one slightly raised chance of a certain disease may not mean much when compared to a host of other illnesses with much higher baseline chances. As it happens though, prostate cancer is already high on the list, so I do intent to fully make use of the information.

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ihodes 16y ago
EDIT for history: [The original comment was by edw##, regarding the strength of his ancestor's sperm. It wasn't a bad post, I just felt it was inaccurate/confusing.] Though poetic, that's not at all how you should look at it. Those sperm carry the same DNA. That DNA is the pattern your proteins are crafted with. That pattern (in conjunction with the environment you live in) is what determines how "sturdy" you are. You are not that sperm. Think of your DNA as the bash program, and the ENV variables as a sort of control flow (like in many programs). The end result of the computation is you. The "strength" of your father's (and forefathers') sperm is important, sure, but from an evolutionary perspective. Those 100,000,000 sperm were, for all intents and purposes, the same. 23andme isn't about telling you what you already know–though that's certainly an interesting confirmation–it's about telling you what you don't know. Or at least giving you an idea about it, and the raw data that largely determines how you turned out (given your env vars).

JacobAldridge 16y ago

Combining two recent HN discussions here - this one, and one yesterday on the difficulty in getting insurance in the US (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2247560 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2247560) What are the consequences (immediate, or further down the track), not so much of using a service like 23andMe (I imagine it will be a fairly standard part of medical testing in X generations) but of posting on your blog that you're (to paraphrase) 1.90x as likely to contract Parkinson's?

Maciek416 16y ago
One simple immediate consequence may be that you cannot answer a question like "do you have any reason to believe that you may be at risk for XYZ" anymore without potentially having to rely on a result that may or may not have statistical significance -- or which you may have misunderstood. A lot of 23andme reports are in the form of "if you are east asian and have the following genotype for SNP rsXXXXXX, you have a 3% chance of developing condition XYZ". Personal genomics services like 23andme are going out there and saying that SNPs are pretty reliable, but the reality for some conditions and traits may still be fuzzy as more data comes in. There may be as-yet undiscovered SNPs that have a bigger effect on your cancer risk than the ones their v3 chip happens to cover, for example, and just having a 1 or even a dozen SNPs may not be enough for a clear picture. On the other hand, an insurance company might find it risky enough to deny you coverage. Nobody knows how that will shake out. In the future, if a given insurance provider knows you have purchased a service like this, they also can then figure out which SNPs you know your genotypes for (it would be fairly trivial for any insurance company to find out which 950,000 or so SNPs 23andme tests for), and can then craft a survey form asking about these specific traits. Many people will likely still try the service anyway because they'd rather know, pro-actively address certain issues, and risk the insurance game, than not know at all. [EDIT: Apologies for not having read your question all that clearly. Just assume the above applies to "admitting you've used the service in public"]
- silencio 16y ago
  > potentially having to rely on a result that may or may not have statistical significance I can't stress this enough. I've had a bunch of friends buy the 23andme kit while it was on sale recently because they were interested in my results from a while ago, and their buildup to getting their own results was "what if it tells me I'm never going to have x?!" and things like that. Kind of frustrating to explain how it works. 23andme put me at average to low risk of a few things they test for that I have in real life. One of the more frustrating things to read was that 23andme declared from preliminary asthma research that I was at lower than average to average odds, when in my past I've had severe asthma I've even been hospitalized for. On the flip side of things, 23andme determined my risk of melanoma from genetics is 0.1% (as compared to 1.7% average). But I live in Los Angeles and I get sunburnt/suntanned multiple times a year, not to mention the sheer number of hours I spend outdoors in general. I regularly track skin changes and visit a dermatologist once in a while because new spots and changes on my skin stress the hell out of me. I know my risk likely skyrockets past the 1.7% easily if you take my environment into account. Insurance companies already play this risk/percentage game anyway with lots of other information, and I don't think I see a big of a risk as people being denied insurance from testing like this. If anything, it means everyone can be more proactive and save money and lives in the end. (Of course, I am being pretty naively optimistic here...) I mean, I imagine that's what they're trying to do on some level when they send me pamphlets about STD testing and prenatal care in the mail every other week just because they know I'm a 20something female on birth control.

Jun8 16y ago

My big question is: does 23andMe get to keep the DNA data, what does the User Agreement say?

nickpinkston 16y ago
They give you the choice of either having them keep it - or throw it away. I had them keep it because they can then run further tests without needing my spit again.

bkrausz 16y ago

Well, my 23andMe results told me I was a Tay-Sachs carrier, and my parents already knew they both weren't, which brought up some interesting questions on both my past and future. Fortunately I'm more likely to assume tests are wrong than my parent's cheated, but it was the future thing I was more concerned with. I later found out I was part of the 23andMe data mixup[1], so the results I had for a week actually weren't mine. Kind of killed my faith in the system, and when I got my actual results they were quite boring. At the very least it makes a good story, worth the $99 in my book. [1] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/Sample-swaps-at-23andMe:-a-cautionary-tale http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/Sample-swaps-at-23...

kenjackson 16y ago

Has 23andMe done any targeted work w/ adoption sites and such? I know from talking to adopted friends, they often don't have info on family medical history. This would be really useful for them.

RK 16y ago

Didn't get mine done, but both of my parents had theirs done. My dad's was pretty much as expected, as far as ancestry (my grandmother is an avid genealogist). On my mom's side there is a lost of uncertainty about our ancestry. Of course, because you only see the mitochondrial DNA result for a female, its not as informative for someone who is probably a mix (like my mom). I think an admixture test will be the one that's really useful. My dad downloaded his raw data and is enlisting me to use some of the 3rd party tools out there to do some other comparisons, but I haven't really dug into it yet. Home bioinformatics...

cowmixtoo 16y ago

If you want to get more use out of the raw data 23andMe produces from your DNA sequencing I encourage everyone to check out this free / GPL'd Firefox plugin my company created. http://www.snptips.com/ http://www.snptips.com/

jeffthebear 16y ago

I got on the deal for $100 on DNA day and found that most of the results I got back were interesting and cool to show my friends but it didn't change my life/habits in anyway. Most of the 23andMe's data is currently targeted for people of European descent and there isn't a whole lot of data on people of African and Asian descent in their database but even many of the European traits have varying confidence markers based on genetic data we have available today. I am hoping that much more data will be coming in the future but at the moment I wouldn't accept the results as gospel.