6 replies to this topic

[Debaser]

I'm considering doing one of these genetic tests, but I'm unsure how valuable they actually are. Has anyone had one done? By whom and what did you think of it?

23andMe seems to be the biggest, but as I'm sure you all know, they recently got banned from revealing the health-related info. I kind of wish I'd done it earlier now.

Furthermore the ancestry stuff is apparently mostly garbage? I wonder how much is meaningful. Obviously saying you are descended from Richard III might not make a lot of sense given that if you go far enough back we're all related and it's difficult to tell from the DNA you share, but surely the parts about which part of the world you're from are relevant?

And in terms of the health issues, even if we don't know for sure about how or why or even if a certain allele increases your chance of a disease, it is still true that you have that allele. I think it's valuable to know it, and then whatever research comes out in the future you'll only know more and more.

I also wonder how the companies compare. So far I've found:

• http://www.23andme.com/ - $99 (~£60) for ancestry only but possibly some health stuff in the future based on FDA approval?
• http://dna.ancestry.com/ - $99 for ancestry but no health info
• http://www.britainsdna.com/ - £250 for fatherline, motherline, ancestry and redhead (example results), but no health info
• http://www.dna-world...no-complete-20/ - £260 for fatherline, motherline, ancestry, but no health

There's also a list here: http://www.isogg.org...sting_companies

Seems like the two US ones are the best value for money, assuming that they allow UK customers.

Does anyone know what they actually analyse? Is it everything, or just specific genes that they're looking for? Can you get the raw data? I'm asking because I wonder whether when the functions of genes are identified in the future, will the results be updated, so I know which allele I have, or would that require retesting?

My other concern is privacy. I don't particularly want my genes passed around, or used for marketing research, or really revealed to anyone except myself, now or in the future.

[niner]

23andMe determines about a million SNPs. You can download this data, then upload it confidentially into Promethease to get all kinds of health information. There are a handful of SNPs that I think are important to know now, chief among them being the two that determine your ApoE genotype.

23andMe has a "relative finder". They compare your genome to others they have done, and estimate degree of relatedness. It's not bogus. My wife found a second cousin that way. There is no way in hell that you will identify a specific ancestor many generations back- they don't claim to do that.

If you know a little bit about genetics, then I think 23andMe is a great deal. I don't know if they work internationally, but there's no physical reason that shouldn't be possible. Might be legal ones, though...

[Debaser]

Thank you. 23andMe looks very tempting. I think I might give it a go. $100 is not a lot of money.

[Debaser]

Turns out the shipping to the UK is $80; nearly as much as the product itself. Guess not as cheap as I thought.

[AgeVivo]

@Debaser, I second niner, 23andMe + promethease is a very good combination

[Debaser]

So I went ahead with it. The ancestry is mildly interesting but didn't throw up any surprises.

I wonder if someone could help with interpreting a few things since I don't know much about genetics. The terminology is all new to me.

My ApoE (rs429358) is TT which I believe is good.

But my MTHFR C677T (rs1801133) is not CC, which is supposed to be bad right? However, it all talks about having one T or two Ts being bad. But I have AA! What does it mean? I guess lack of CC is still bad right? Could it be a mistake?

I put my data through Genetic Genie and I've got three reds and quite a few yellows for methylation analysis.

Any other SNPs worth taking a look at?

Edited by Debaser, 05 April 2014 - 07:37 PM.

[Debaser]

After looking at more SNPs I'm a little disappointed that v4 of 23andMe seems to have much fewer SNPs, including some of the interesting ones. They apparently made this decision for efficiency reasons.

I've managed to discover why so many letters were wrong. It's because they are flipped. I'm still learning, but as I understand it, my AA I referred to above is a TT in the minus orientation.