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23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

blog.23andme.com

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Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#201

Post by jamesknelson »

mvleming wrote: post #133
hop wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's what happened. Also, procedures were different back then, so we could have many more siblings, hope we didn't hook up in college.

The percentages I've heard are all over the place, but a decent number of children are actually not genetically related to their fathers. (I've heard anywhere between 3% and 30%.) One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes.

The way you have worded it makes it sound like you have put all the blame on women for having affairs ("women have affairs to..."). It takes two to tango, so to speak. In fact, according to wikipedia, men are significantly more likely to have an affair than women (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidelity).

The fact that men are often actively trying to get in women's pants likely has a greater effect on these statistics than women's genes' desire to reproduce.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#202

Post by smnv »

hop wrote: post #80

In other news, 23andMe introduced relative finder not long ago. I hadn't logged on in over 2 years after I did it with a groupon promo, but I had a public profile with my name and city. A half-sister i didn't know i had found me with matching DNA, owns a business 5 blocks away and walked over to meet me (what's the probability of that!?). Found my dad was not my biological dad and i was from the same sperm donor as m…

That can be a great movie plot.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#203

Post by mvleming »

javert wrote: post #199
mvleming wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was actually a study that showed female rats are more attracted to (read: had sex with) male rats with very different immune systems. The way she senses this is by the pheromone (smell) he gives off and as a consequence, her offspring have stronger immune systems. In other words, this study suggests at least to some degree we don't even choose who we have sex with. Haha.

The purpose of my comment was to point out that humans have a (sophisticated) brain, something critical that you had overlooked, and you still seem to have missed that.

You argued that "who we have sex with is a choice we make by thinking about it, not something pre-encoded by our genes." I was trying to suggest maybe the opposite is true to some extent by sharing that study regarding the rats with you. Female rats unconsciously have sex with male rats whose pheromones smell like their immune systems are very different, in other words, who they select as mates is something pre-encoded in their genes.

Are you arguing that because we have brains we can 'override' what our genes would otherwise have us do?

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#204

Post by a_bonobo »

yread wrote: post #49

Damn, I bought it 2 weeks ago! They keep mentioning the benefits to science, but can you actually access their database as an academic?

You cannot get access to the database as an academic (the privacy-implications alone give me a headache - contact all customers, ask them to consent to research project X, research project X has to contact all people for their own ethics-commitee etc.) - typically you can only access results from one of their studies.

Projects like openSNP however give people a space to voluntarily upload their data for scientists to use.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#206

Post by gnaritas »

nathos wrote: post #190
gnaritas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what if UHC raises premiums on everyone that does not take this test? Don't think that's legal. > What if employers require their employees to do this much like drug / background checks? Also don't think that's legal.

In which case they could make it a "voluntary" check. Like the shady employers that demand candidates' Facebook credentials.

Sure, and you say no. Just like you say no to the checkout clerk asking for your phone number when you make a purchase. Same way you so no to a cop when he asks to search your vehicle.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#207

Post by ckg »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #198
justincormack wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. That's a theory and it is one that is hard to disprove experimentally. It is a much stronger theory than evolution, saying that every action is correctly designed to optimise gene transmission. Essentially it is trying to say that we are at a global maximum in a space that is probably more nonlinear. In fact our genes may well be suboptimal in some respects even if you think they have "control". The conto…

>Not really. That's a theory and it is one that is hard to disprove experimentally. It is a much stronger theory than evolution This isn't right at all. The idea that our behaviors are shaped in ways that increase our fitness follows necessarily from the theory of evolution. If we believe that behaviors are influenced at all by our genes, then behaviors that are detrimental get weeded out. What's left over was more f…

According to this article (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/nifm-sfe12061...) homosexuality is epigenetic and not genetic (i.e. is not related to a specific gene, but to chemical differences that affect the expression of genes).

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#208

Post by a_bonobo »

jacquesm wrote: post #118
agotterer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of sudo anonymized. I purchased my test in 2010. The account is tied to my email address for login. I ordered the test under just my first name to my office at the time. I also purchased a test for a friend. Other then an email address, that test isn't tied to him in any other way. So while its not impossible to tie back to someone, it's not a perfect 1:1 relationship.

That's your DNA, by definition it is not anonymized, it defines you about as good as possible. You could infer all kinds of stuff about you from your DNA. 33 bits... male, brown eyes, family member in the 3rd degree of 'x', family member to the 4 th degree of 'y' and so on.

With the caveat that you can not predict these phenotypes with 100%:

for example, in humans it's relatively easy to predict eye colour with about 99% certainty (but only if the colour is identified as "brown", "blue", "green" - nothing complicated!), however, skin colour is harder to predict (72% correct in this paper) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187249731...

People always assume that you can just look at the genes and immediately perfectly predict what's going on with the person in question, but a) people forget about gene/environment interaction (think about human height, only about 5% predictable using SNPs) and b) our science is simply not so far, and especially SNPs (right now the main product of 23andMe) don't predict as much as people would like them to.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#209

Post by a_bonobo »

a-priori wrote: post #134
upinsmoke wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so expensive to ship internationally?

Probably clearing a biological sample through customs.

It's also two packages in one - the first one to get the set to you, and the package includes the shipping and package to ship the sample back to the US.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#210

Post by [deleted] »

mvleming wrote: post #203
javert wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of my comment was to point out that humans have a (sophisticated) brain, something critical that you had overlooked, and you still seem to have missed that.

You argued that "who we have sex with is a choice we make by thinking about it, not something pre-encoded by our genes." I was trying to suggest maybe the opposite is true to some extent by sharing that study regarding the rats with you. Female rats unconsciously have sex with male rats whose pheromones smell like their immune systems are very different, in other words, who they select as mates is something pre-encod…

[deleted]
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