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How to sequence your own DNA at home

bradleywoolf.com

71–80 of 161 posts

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#71

I don't want to sequence at home. But I do want to sequence it using a third-party that gives me all the raw data. I live in Europe and I'm just a simple consumer. Does anyone know how I can do this? What service would I use / you can recommend? Them not keeping it on their side would be a huge bonus of course but not sure I can ask for that much.

YSeq, TellMeGen - or reaching out to local sequencing labs

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#72

I don't want to sequence at home. But I do want to sequence it using a third-party that gives me all the raw data. I live in Europe and I'm just a simple consumer. Does anyone know how I can do this? What service would I use / you can recommend? Them not keeping it on their side would be a huge bonus of course but not sure I can ask for that much.

Many companies offer that. In the local area they have e. g. mail-like stations where you give out your order and they give you what you need (e. g. if it is a plasmid, it is mailed into storage boxes often on the same day or next day). "Not keeping it on their side" ... well. If they sequenced it, they have data in their computer, right? How could you avoid that? I don't see this as possible, it depends on trust (an…

Files aren't magically stored forever.

They could have the sampling machine write to an SD card and mail that back, or store it with a one-time-use link like pwpush.com, or have it expire & self-delete after N days like WeTransfer.

You of course have to trust that they aren't secretly keeping their own copy on S3 forever, but that'll always be a risk, and it can probably be contractually enforced and audited.

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#73
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to get a plumber to knock on my door for under $100. Maybe you mean $500? Or is it $100 for the lab bit only?

Well if you have this problem, then having the plumber over is a sunk cost. You're paying them regularly to clear the sewer, and their snake will come back with root matter in the bit. Put that sample in a zip-lock bag and call me. I'll come over, take the sample, and identify the plants near your sewer line. If I get a match, I'll sell that info to you for $100. Once I figure out how to make it work at all, I'll bui…

Fastest/cheapest sequencing based method would likely be to collect samples in DNA preserving agent (zymo DNA shield is decent for this), then have an automated platform for extracting DNA and preparing amplicon sequencing libraries (rbcL + matK probably?). Worth having a look at how Plasmidsaurus did this, they did have a similar service for microbiome analysis (https://plasmidsaurus.com/sample-prep/microbiome#16S-extract... - looks like they don't accept raw samples anymore though...). Oxford nanopore sequencing is a decent technology for this as it's fairly straightforward to get working and easy to scale :) As an added bonus, you could perhaps also carry out 16S sequencing in parallel from the sample to get an idea of the microbiome of the sewer.

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#74

What is the accuracy in this ? Aka if I run the experiment 10 times how many differences will i get? I don’t have a physical sense on what would be a good number.

Oxford Nanopore unfortunately has a high error rate (3-5%) compared to other sequencing technologies. And the errors are non-random

For most DNA it now sits at ~Q20 (1%) which is a big improvement - there was also some hacky stuff like HERRO and duplex sequencing which improved it substantially. For routine genome sequencing it's definitely suitable, and the long-read advantage helps resolve some of those trickier regions

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#75
As someone with experience (albeit almost 20 years out of date) experience of wet lab DNA collection and sequencing - this stuff is hard, you will fail a lot, and you will fail a lot more if you don't have an extremely clean environment to do this in. And once you have data, you should be asking yourself how accurate it is given the environment you collected it in, you should be looking at correlated sequence errors that are not taken into account[1].

But also: genetic counselling is a real thing that real people study. Please don't ask an LLM questions about what your genes are going to do to you without having access to someone who has the ability to contexualise the data and put you in touch with relevant experts. I have a PhD in this and I would not trust myself to be able to interpret data about myself in a detached and rational way.

(And: why is the link to Molecular Biology of the Cell to the 6th edition, when the 7th came out 4 years ago? Random fact: the first three editions were co-authored by my supervisor during my first PhD attempt, who went on to demonstrate that Roger Penrose's ideas about the importance of microtubules in chemotaxis in E. coli were absolute bullshit. Great guy)

[1] I spent a while analysing very early (by commercial standards) Illumina data in 2007, and being able to align stuff to reference genomes made it possible to identify certain biases. Nanopore technology is likely to have more of those, and if you don't have the ability to take those into account you may have a very bad time

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#76

I don't want to sequence at home. But I do want to sequence it using a third-party that gives me all the raw data. I live in Europe and I'm just a simple consumer. Does anyone know how I can do this? What service would I use / you can recommend? Them not keeping it on their side would be a huge bonus of course but not sure I can ask for that much.

Sequencing dot com. TellmeGen DNA Complete. Unless you live in Germany (in Germany it seems to be illegal to send saliva to other countries).

TellMeGen has a lifelong update, I guess they store your data to do that.

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#77
post #55

> This is intended to be read by AI- please just copy and paste the URL of this and have ChatGPT walk you through it. If you have AR glasses, even better, since the AI can walk you through the whole protocol. What kind of magic is going on here, am I missing something?

Hi, author here- I intended it to be hands-free so you can upload to ChatGPT/Claude and talk to it. I found it easier to follow the protocol each time by talking to AI rather than having to read from the computer every time I had to check something, reducing context-switching You can still read it, though it is pretty dense

But where does AR fit in? Doesn't this just need voice mode?

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#78
post #71

I don't want to sequence at home. But I do want to sequence it using a third-party that gives me all the raw data. I live in Europe and I'm just a simple consumer. Does anyone know how I can do this? What service would I use / you can recommend? Them not keeping it on their side would be a huge bonus of course but not sure I can ask for that much.

YSeq, TellMeGen - or reaching out to local sequencing labs

TellMeGen says something about a lifelong update of the result.

So they store your data

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#79
post #75

As someone with experience (albeit almost 20 years out of date) experience of wet lab DNA collection and sequencing - this stuff is hard, you will fail a lot, and you will fail a lot more if you don't have an extremely clean environment to do this in. And once you have data, you should be asking yourself how accurate it is given the environment you collected it in, you should be looking at correlated sequence errors…

> this stuff is hard, you will fail a lot, and you will fail a lot more if you don't have an extremely clean environment to do this in

The Oxford Nanopore sequencing technology is one of the most robust to use. You need to buy some kit - but defo doable. Nothing compared pouring your own gel and doing radioactively labelled Sanger reactions :-)

Though you could just go to an sequencing company that services labs ( that just does sequencing outsourcing - rather than a personal genome company ).

Totally agree on the dangers around interpretation.

Re: How to sequence your own DNA at home

#80
post #56

This feels like the acme of narcissism. How much time and money are people willing to spend on navel gazing?

I don't get you at all.

Is going to your doctor or eating better food "navel gazing"? Predispositions to some diseases can be read from your DNA. Remember Angelina Jolie undergoing preventive mastectomy because she had a high genetic risk for breast cancer? Well, so do many non-celebrities.

Then there is the specific case of people who may suspect that their bio-parents are someone else, and there is nothing weird about wanting to know where you actually come from.

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