DNA Companies

The Latest News About 23andMe

Blaine Bettinger 1 Comment

image For new readers of The Genetic Genealogist, 23andMe is a personal genomics company that offers a service to examine more than 600,000 SNPs throughout an individual’s genome. The information is then used to analyze ancestry (using Y-DNA and mtDNA) and to estimate propensity for disease. For much more info about 23andMe and similar companies, look under “Personal Genomics” on my Featured Articles page.

A Contest

Today, 23andMe announced on their blog – The Spittoon – the winner of the company’s first ‘Win Your Genome Contest’. The contest was to describe Lilly Mendel, a publicly available but anonymous profile at 23andMe – based upon her genetic information alone. The winner was Mike Cariaso, who previously created a program that analyzes 23andMe SNP data using the growing SNPedia database. ... Click to read more!

Reproducibility of SNP Testing, Part II

Blaine Bettinger 7 Comments

imageThe Quantified Self has a follow-up to last week’s post about the reproducibility of SNP testing by 23andMe and deCODEme using Illumina SNP chips (see the Quantified Self’s post and my post). In that post, it was revealed that two comparisons of the 560,000 overlapping SNP results from the two different companies had revealed differences of just 23 locations for one individual and 35 for another.

Soon after last week’s post, one of these individuals – Ann Turner – contacted The Quantified Self with new information that 4 of the SNPs on her list of 35 disagreeing results are also on the other person’s list of 23 disagreeing results (Antonio Oliveira). From Ann’s email to The Quantified Self:

Four of those (rs11149566, rs4458717, rs4660646, and rs754499) were also found in Antonio’s list. That’s more than you would expect by chance. ... Click to read more!

DNAPrint Genomics and a New Roots Television Video

Blaine Bettinger 1 Comment

Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak recently wrote “I’m a Euro-Mutt!” about the results of her AncestrybyDNA EuropeanDNA 2.0 test (from DNAPrint Genomics). Megan found that the results of her test were both expected and surprising! From DNAPrint Genomics’ website:

DNAPrint® Genomics’ powerful new EuropeanDNA 2.0 product, further elucidates European sub-ancestry using 1,349 European Ancestry Informative Markers (SNP AIMs). This test reports a customer’s proportional basic continental European ancestry: Southeastern Europe (SEE – Armenian, Jewish, Italian and Greek), Iberian (IB -Spanish, Portuguese), Basque (BAS – Spanish/French Pyrenees border), Continental European (CE – German, Irish, English, Netherlands, French, Swiss and some Italian) and North Eastern European (NEE – Polish, Baltic, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian) ancestry. ... Click to read more!

From Forbes: "States Crack Down On Online Gene Tests"

Blaine Bettinger 9 Comments

New York

Update: See the related story in GenomeWeb News (free sub. required).

Forbes.com published an article today entitled “States Crack Down On Online Gene Tests” that examines New York state’s response to the recent launch of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing services by companies such as 23andMe, deCODEme, SeqWright, and Navigenics, as well as the behind-the-scenes companies like Illumina and Affymetrix.

Unfortunately, the regulatory environment surrounding DTC genetic services is hazy at best. From the article:

“Over the last six months, New York State’s Department of Health has sent letters raising the specter of fines and jail time to six online gene-testing firms that offer consumers the ability to peer into their genome to assess their future risk of getting diseases such as cancer, heart disease and multiple sclerosis. Often, it turns out, the services offering these DNA deep-dives are doing so without the involvement of a doctor. That puts them on the wrong side of the law.” ... Click to read more!

Navigenics Open For Business

Blaine Bettinger 7 Comments

Navigenics, a genome scanning company, officially launches their genome service today – called the “Navigenics Health Compass”, with a cocktail reception in NYC tonight at 6:00PM. Thomas Goetz of Epidemix writes an article in Wired today about some of the differences between Navigenics and other large-scale genome scanning companies.

The launch is also mentioned in an exclusive interview at Genetics and Health with Navigenics’ medical director, Dr. Michael Nierenberg. This piece is the first article in a seven article series, including the future article 6, which discusses some of my favorite things: “Privacy, insurance, GINA, and ethics.” I’ll be sure to link to that article when it comes out. The launch is also discussed over at ScienceRoll. ... Click to read more!

The Entrepreneurs Behind Family Tree DNA

Blaine Bettinger 2 Comments

The “Starting a Business” section of the online bizjournals site has an article called “Riding the Revolution” that reviews the success of the entrepreneurs behind the popular Family Tree DNA (who recently launched a new company called DNATraits).

The company was founded in April 2000 and is led by president Bennett Greenspan and chief operating officer Max Blankfeld. As the article details, the company has grown from $2.6 million in revenue in 2004 to $12.2 million in 2006, an incredibly impressive climb.

Part of the article describes the company’s future directions and challenges:

“The best solution to building an infrastructure is to be proactive, Blankfeld says, in areas such as human resources, technology and research and development. ‘We hired and keep hiring good people, whether for customer service or the lab; we invested in state-of-the-art equipment for the lab and we keep developing new tests that will respond to our customers’ needs,’ he says.” ... Click to read more!

New R1b SNP Series From Family Tree DNA

Blaine Bettinger 1 Comment

Family Tree DNA announces a new SNP product for members of the R1b Y-chromosome haplogroup. The following was posted at the DNA-NEWBIE Yahoogroup by Max Blankfeld, Vice-President of Operations and Marketing at FTDNA:

Many of you have asked about, and have quoted Bennett Greenspan’s comment at the 4th Annual FTDNA Conference on Genetic Genealogy, that in early 2008 we’d be offering the R1b U SNP’s, known as U106 and U152 (also called: S21/S28). We are pleased to announce today that a mini panel containing those SNP’s (as well as U198 and P107) are now available.

Previously, FTDNA could SNP test for R1b1c1 through R1b1c8, but was not testing for R1b1c9, R1b1c10, or R1b1c11. The new SNPs will test for R1b1c9 (U106), R1b1c9b (U198), and R1b1c10 (U152). The P107 SNP is a private SNP within R1b1c9. The R1b tree is available through ISOGG: ... Click to read more!

Genetic Genealogy and Black History Month

Blaine Bettinger 3 Comments

bhm1.jpg

With the popular African American Lives series on PBS and numerous news stories and magazine columns, Black History Month often results in increased attention to the genealogy and genetic history of African Americans. I saw a similar increased interest in genetic genealogy last February as well.

The Multiracial Roots of Americans

Diverse has an article entitled “More Americans Are Discovering Their Multiracial Roots.” The article discusses traditional genealogical research, then mentions genetic genealogy – particularly automosal testing:

“One of the more fascinating developments with the new genealogy is the extent to which DNA testing is revealing the multi-racial ancestry of Americans. While there’s some controversy about the claims of DNA testing firms as to how accurately they can match individuals to ancestors from specific communities and ethnic groups, there’s a consensus that proper testing can roughly specify a person’s relative mix of his or her ancestors’ geographic origins.” ... Click to read more!

More 23andMe in the News

Blaine Bettinger

image Earlier today I posted about the recent updates to the 23andMe service, including an enhanced Gene Journal section and the new Paternal Ancestry.

To get a much more thorough analysis of these new additions, read David P. Hamilton’s “23andMe makes genomics personal — and slick” at VentureBeat: lifesciences. Hamilton’s articles are always insightful and well-written, and I would highly recommend this one, especially if you are considering a personal genomics service.

Interestingly, Hamilton gives 23andMe’s website high marks over deCODEme’s similar service. Hsien-Hsien Lei at Eye on DNA recently highlighted (in a post entitled “Ann Turner on Personal Genomics Companies 23andMe vs deCODEme“) an article written by genetic genealogist Ann Turner for the GENEALOGY-DNA mailing list in which she compared the services offered by the two companies. Genetic Future picked up Eye on DNA’s post and wrote “Ann Turner compares 23andMe and deCODEme.” ... Click to read more!