carrier testing
dgmacarthur | January 13, 2011In the last century infant mortality has declined precipitously in the Western world, thanks in large part to the development of antibiotics and vaccination. Yet as the suffering and death from infectious disease has reduced, the burden from genetic disease has become proportionately greater: currently around 20% of all infant deaths in developed countries are a result of inherited Mendelian (single-gene) disorders.
What can be done to reduce this burden? Increasingly sophisticated methods for detecting disease in embryos during pregnancy will help, and these have recently taken another step…
sb admin | January 11, 2011Software company 5AM Solutions has just launched a neat little FireFox plug-in for customers of consumer genomics company 23andMe.
The idea is very simple:
Download your raw data from 23andMe (or use one of the files from me or my colleagues at Genomes Unzipped);
Install the plug-in from here and point it to your 23andMe data;
Browse to a website discussing one of the genetic variants included on the 23andMe chip, and you'll see highlights around the rsID of any variant on the page (rsIDs are unique codes assigned by dbSNP to most of the common variants targeted by personal genomics…
sb admin | January 7, 2011As part of his Gene Week celebration over at Forbes, Matthew Herper has a provocative post titled "Why you can't have your $1000 genome". In this post I'll explain why, while Herper's pessimism is absolutely justified for genomes produced in a medical setting, I'm confident that I'll be obtaining my own near-$1000 genome in the not-too-distant future.
Matt's underlying argument is that while sequencing costs will continue to drop, obtaining a complete genome sequence that is sufficiently accurate for medical interpretation will require additional expenses (increased sequence coverage to…
sb admin | December 15, 2010Late last week I stumbled across a press release with an attention-grabbing headline ("The Causes of Common Diseases are Not Genetic Concludes a New Analysis") linking to a lengthy blog post at the Bioscience Resource Project, a website devoted to food and agriculture. The post, written by two plant geneticists, plays a tune that will be familiar to anyone who has encountered the rhetoric of GeneWatch UK: basically, modern genomics is pure hype perpetuated by scientists seeking grant money and corporations seeking to absolve themselves of responsibility for environmental disasters.
The…
sb admin | December 3, 2010A reminder to anyone who reads my other blog Genomes Unzipped that we have a reader survey underway there now, which includes some questions about genetic testing experiences and attitudes towards genetics. We're closing the survey to responses this weekend, so if you're an Unzipped reader but haven't had a chance to fill in the survey, please do so now.
sb admin | November 24, 2010Update 30/11/10: 23andMe has extended their 80% discount until Christmas, without a need for a discount code.
Personal genomics company 23andMe has made some fairly major announcements this week: a brand new chip, a new product strategy (including a monthly subscription fee), and yet another discount push. What do these changes mean for existing and new customers?
The new chip
23andMe's new v3 chip is a substantial improvement over the v2 chip that most current customers were run on (the v2 was introduced back in September 2008). Firstly, the v3 chip includes nearly double the number of…
sb admin | October 12, 2010
Back in June I launched a new blog, Genomes Unzipped, together with a group of colleagues and friends with expertise in various areas of genetics. At the time I made a rather cryptic comment about "planning much bigger things for the site over the next few months".
Today I announced what I meant by that: from today, all of the 12 members of Genomes Unzipped - including my wife and I - will be releasing their own results from a variety of genetic tests, online, for anyone to access. Initially those results consist of data from one company (23andMe) for all 12 members; deCODEme for one…
dgmacarthur | January 22, 2010Disclaimer: my wife and I have both received and used free testing kits from Counsyl.
Counsyl is a rather enigmatic player in the personal genomics field: apart from a brief mention in Steven Pinker's excellent NY Times piece over a year ago and an even briefer post on a Newsweek blog late last year, the company has been in determined stealth mode for much of the last two years.
All that was publicly known about the company when I wrote about them last year was that they will be offering a large-scale carrier screening test: basically, allowing couples who are considering having a baby to…