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Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art

blog.scienceexchange.com

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Re: Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art

#11

Post by kishb87 »

warech wrote: post #10

As personalized medicine becomes more mainstream, it will be important to use accurate terminology in general overviews like OP's website. For example, 23andme does not provide DNA sequencing. Instead, they evaluate samples against a comprehensive panel of small nucleotide polymorphisms. This "fingerprinting" is informative and actionable, but not technically sequencing. In the same way, I doubt whether Genetik Ink w…

That is a good point. What we do is Sanger sequencing. This is sequencing of up to 500bp of DNA and not the whole genome. This type of sequencing is much more affordable.

Re: Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art

#12

Post by kishb87 »

jostmey wrote: post #6

I guess this is a cool business idea. The science of decoding the genome into useful information is still in its infancy (I think). This means that right now having your genome sequence is of limited use because there will so much of your genome that we don't understand yet (again, I could be mistaken). These individuals have found a way take this developing technology and sell it. Kudos to them. Does anyone know wha…

We are using Sanger sequencing technology.

Re: Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art

#14

Post by cing »

The unspoken story here is that Science Exchange is more than just a resource for scientists. It also lowers the entry barrier for scientific start-ups.

I suspect that Kishan doesn't have access to a sequencer himself, he just proxies the sample to one of the SNP Genotyping services on Science Exchange (https://www.scienceexchange.com/services/snp-genotyping).

Re: Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art

#17

Post by kishb87 »

endgame wrote: post #16

Oh, they talk big about communicating with the patient. But what they actually want to do is take some of the _most private data I could ever provide_ and make a PICTURE out of it. Uhh, thanks?

You bring up a good point. We have a privacy policy in which our lab does not know the name of the customer through the entire process ensuring confidentiality. We also delete your DNA after 30 days when your guarantee expires. Finally to ensure your identity protection, we do not sequence your entire DNA. We only sequence a portion. You can think of this as only having the first four digits of a credit card. To actually have an even better idea, imagine only having one digit of your credit card. That's the amount of DNA that is sequenced in respect to the entire human genome. When taking these measures into consideration, we believe the issue of personal identification becomes non-relevant.

Re: Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art

#18

Post by kishb87 »

endgame wrote: post #16

Oh, they talk big about communicating with the patient. But what they actually want to do is take some of the _most private data I could ever provide_ and make a PICTURE out of it. Uhh, thanks?

I am also open to other concerns that people may have.I'll do my best to answer them. Please feel free to ask more questions.

Re: Why Geneticists Need Designers: Making DNA Into Art

#20

Post by a_bonobo »

kishb87 wrote: post #12
jostmey wrote: post #6

I guess this is a cool business idea. The science of decoding the genome into useful information is still in its infancy (I think). This means that right now having your genome sequence is of limited use because there will so much of your genome that we don't understand yet (again, I could be mistaken). These individuals have found a way take this developing technology and sell it. Kudos to them. Does anyone know wha…

We are using Sanger sequencing technology.

Is there any specific reason why you use Sanger instead of, let's say, Illumina?

Because in my experience Sanger is slower and more expensive than Illumina or any of the other 3rd-gen-sequencers...

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