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Commentary on human genetics and evolution, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, and the personal genomics industry.
Daniel MacArthur
I write about the genetic and evolutionary basis of human variation, and the companies trying to sell you information about your genome.
Daniel also blogs about personal genomics at Genomes Unzipped.
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Category: genome-wide association studies
Every issue of Nature Genetics is packed full of them, and they're the basis for the risk predictions offered by every personal genomics company - but how do you make sense of a genome-wide association study? How can you tell...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 12:30 PM • •
Category: genome-wide association studies
As an addendum to my previous post on the controversial "longevity genes" study, you should go and check this out. It's a post on the blog of personal genomics company 23andMe, and it's a pretty impressive piece of scientific dissection of...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 9:30 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: genome-wide association studies
A recent paper in Science reported finding a strong genetic signature associated with exceptional longevity. However, the key findings of the paper already seem to be unravelling, with a series of prominent geneticists publicly criticising the study for major methodological flaws.
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 8:30 PM • 16 Comments •
Category: guest post
In a guest post, geneticist Kai Wang makes some serious criticisms of a recent review paper in Cell by Jon McClellan and Mary-Claire King. The Cell paper attacks the validity of recent genome-wide association studies, including some published by Wang; here, Wang fights back.
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 11:30 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: genome-wide association studies
This critique of genome-wide association studies by Jon McClellan and Mary-Claire King in Cell is the latest salvo in a prolonged backlash against genome-wide association studies (GWAS).I hope to have more on the McClellan and King paper shortly, but in...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 5:45 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: copy number variation
A massive study of common, large-scale DNA rearrangements in 16,000 complex disease patients has revealed... well, not much: it appears that common, large deletions and duplications play a relatively minor role in determining susceptibility to common diseases. But why would this be the case?
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 12:00 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: genome-wide association studies
Nic Wade says something very strange in his most recent article on whole genome sequencing in reference to the outcomes of genome-wide association studies:The results of this costly international exercise have been disappointing. About 2,000 sites on the human genome have...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 12:45 PM • 17 Comments •
Category: genome-wide association studies
Personal genomics company 23andMe announced novel genetic associations with hair curl at the recent ASHG meeting - but these findings have now been scooped by a publication from an academic consortium.
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 7:15 PM • 20 Comments •
Category: ashg2009
Personal genomics company 23andMe presented today at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting on novel genetic associations generated by the company using data from their customer base. The presentation showed that the company is capable of doing solid science, although it also raised worrying questions about the validity of survey results from customers who've already seen their genetic data.
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 5:30 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: personal genomics
Details are pretty sketchy, but a press release announced today suggests that personal genomics company 23andMe has performed a genome-wide association study comparing 100 current or former professional NFL players with a set of controls of unspecified sample size.The...
Posted by Daniel MacArthur at 12:30 PM • 24 Comments •
