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The thing is it's not much data in absolute terms, but it's not going to change for over human timescales and tells you something about your entire family, goin
by JZL003 4y ago
The thing is it's not much data in absolute terms, but it's not going to change for over human timescales and tells you something about your entire family, going back generations in the past and many in the future.
On the other hand, look at GWAS studies, if you have many people and know if they get a disease or not, you can narrow down exactly what parts of the genome are implicated in the disease, and start designing drugs for it. It's hard work and doesn't always work, but it allows us to go from high level disease phenotype -> exact mechanistic problems
- bpodgursky 4y agoYeah and I'm digging into this because I personally would much prefer that these GWAS studies have access to my genome and medical data, so they can design drugs for whatever my specific genotype is. I think it's far more likely that this will benefit me and my children, than hurt me. I'm not telling other people they are wrong to be afraid, but I want to understand the exact mechanism of those fears.
- JZL003 4y agoIf you're interested and a US citizen, look into the All of Us program by NIH. They're going to sequence a million people's genome (!!) and allow researchers to use it. And they're doing it in a very careful safe way. It will mean many researchers will have your deanonymized genome (and it's up for debate if it's possible to truly future-proof deanonymize a genome) but it's not sketchy at all and will be a huge help for future generations IMO. And if you're in another country, especially european ones, look into other research programs, there are lots round
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoWhy drugs? These GWAS studies should be looking at nutrition.
- JZL003 4y agoI guess I agree on principle and diet is understated. But let's say, as has happened recently, you're looking at Alzheimer's or lewey body syndrome and you find the gwas returns a lot of results for a certain cellular pathway (like a stress response or where a cell breaks down misfolded proteins, leading to plaques). You can look for small molecule drug which targets that, or try a fancier treatment to target that exact protein. But how would that insight extend to diet? Beyond just eating more health (in whatever way) and exercising more, which does go a long way. Thse drugs are trying to be extremely targeted and intricate in now they work
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoAlzheimer’s, for example, is most likely being caused by a metabolic problem. This will be solved with nutrition. I even believe it can be limited if the correct nutrition (enzymatic cofactors) are discovered. For example https://fjfsdata01prod.blob.core.windows.net/articles/files/823573/pubmed-zip/.versions/1/.package-entries/fnut-09-823573/fnut-09-823573.pdf?sv=2018-03-28&sr=b&sig=%2B3zNi2Fer5PTg74EW5%2F5SFpku%2BCCzKFNh3tdKh68jIs%3D&se=2022-10-01T21%3A27%3A27Z&sp=r&rscd=attachment%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27fnut-09-823573.pdf https://fjfsdata01prod.blob.core.windows.net/articles/files/...