This was the year genomes became commodities. High-profile people including Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and psychologist Steven Pinker had their genomes analysed. One genome-scanning company, of Mountain View, California, gave out free test kits to world leaders at the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, and the media reported tales of celebrity where the glitterati meet to deliver saliva samples for analysis. But for as little as $399, you don鈥檛 have to be rich and famous to get your genome 鈥渄one鈥�.
Trouble is, while it may net you a degree of cocktail-party cachet 鈥� so long as you鈥檙e not worried about privacy issues 鈥� having your genome analysed won鈥檛 tell you much that鈥檚 useful. 快猫短视频s just don鈥檛 know enough yet about how genes translate into health effects to be able to say much about your medical future. The genomics companies test for a huge number of gene variants 鈥� between 600,000 and 2 million, depending on the company 鈥� but only a few dozen traits are well enough understood for the companies to tell you the results. Most of those are either trivial (hard versus soft ear wax, for example) or have only a small effect on the risk of developing diseases such as Alzheimer鈥檚 or diabetes. Learning your genes put you at a 20 per cent greater risk of heart disease, for instance, might be enough to nudge you into exercising and watching your diet 鈥� but then, you already knew sloth and gluttony were risky, didn鈥檛 you?
Even if your genome is of limited value to you, though, it could be precious to researchers. Once they accumulate a large enough database of genetic variants, they can mine it for links between genes and disease susceptibility or other traits. Some genome-scanning companies are already beginning to do this with customers鈥� data.
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Academia is getting in on the game, too. The highest-profile initiative is the , led by geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School in Boston. The PGP aims to convince 100,000 people to put their genome sequences in a public database. Already, 10 prominent volunteers, including Church and Pinker, have posted portions of their genome, and 5000 others have pledged to join. Sequencing whole genomes is still too slow and expensive to make PGP鈥檚 vision a reality, but once that hurdle is overcome 鈥� probably within a few years 鈥� individual genomics seems poised to make the leap from entertainment to medical tool.