January 23, 2008
Spitting into a tube to find my genes
I spent some time this morning spitting into a plastic tube and was rewarded for my endeavours with a woolly hat with the slogan: I Spat.
I was contributing saliva for a genetic test that will be carried out by 23 and Me, a Silicon Valley start-up that is attempting to bring genetic testing to the masses. It has launched its service, which costs $999 per person, in the US and is launching this week in Europe.
I got a guided tour of what 23 and Me does with your genetic sample from Esther Dyson, the Silicon Valley guru who is on the company’s board. The company’s co-founders, Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey were also on hand, wearing white laboratory coats.
The company, whose name comes from the 23 pairs of chromosomes in each person’s genome, is partly funded by Google and Ms Wojcicki is the wife of Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder.
Once your genetic analysis has been fed into the company’s website, you can find out whether you are more or less at risk of diseases such as Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes than the average population. You can also find out which population group your ancestors were in.
Apart from that, the most intriguing data emerges when other members of your family or your friends also take the test. Ms Dyson showed me how her test showed that she was indeed the daughter of Freeman Dyson.
As to whether lots of people will find it worth splashing out $999 for information that is interesting rather than vital, we shall see. I shall report back if my genetic test turns up anything remarkable, assuming it is repeatable.
At the end, Ms Wojcicki took a photogaph of me and my colleague Gideon Rachman in our woolly hats. That is one piece of biographical data I would like to keep under wraps.
