$999 personal genome sequenced

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Today 23andme.com has opened up for business. $999 + shipping to get your genome sequenced (well at least a few thousand SNPs). This is pretty cheap considering in 2003 the first genome sequenced costed millions.

Thought people might be interested. . .

www.23andme.com

Details. . .

SNPs, or single nucleotide polymorphisms, exist in everyone's DNA. It is basically a fingerprint in your DNA that shows who you are, and you inherit them from your parents. Some of these SNPs have been associated with predisposition to major health problems. If you have SNP A you are twice as likely to have a heart attack before you turn 40, etc. etc. So this isn't your entire genome, but more like a Cliff Notes version. Entire individual genome sequencing is probably a decade or more off (except for the rich) and even then I expect it to be very expensive. IMHO
 
This isn't the full blown sequencing though where they get down to the individual nucleotides. So until they do that, pass.
 
Didn't the first one a few years ago cost billions of dollars?

And they had an article the other day saying that this is a complete waste of money if you know your family history.
 
I could see doing this for my dad in a couple years if it's actually worthwhile and the costs keep coming down. He's big into geneology.
 
As a guy who uses this technology pretty often, all this is going to tell you is how inbred you are and whether you have any large chunks of DNA missing. So if those kinds of things are question mark for you, have at it. We're not far off from individual sequencing for a grand though.
 
Many SNPs have been associated with major medical predispositons (ie Breast Cancer, Prostrate cancer, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinsons to name a few that I have read). So this technology could actually be helpful for people who are getting to the age where these things will affect you. Most of these health problems are non fatal if you caught them in time. This would encourage people at risk to screen and therefore its worth $1000.

As for individual sequencing being close. I doubt it. Plasmid sequencing still costs about a penny a base pair. Human genome = 3 billion base pairs. So maybe only 30 million bucks for your own personal sequence. . .
 
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