Personal Genetics Plusses

March 14, 2013

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Knowing their genetic information could help people improve their lives and, possibly, avoid preventable deaths, writes 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki in the Guardian's Comment Is Free section. While she acknowledges that it will take years for researchers to uncover what all the billions of bases in the human genome do, she says that enough is currently known to help some people. For example, Wojcicki notes that about 8 percent of people of European descent have a variant that increases their risk for developing blood clots and that there are a number of strategies such people can take to reduce that danger.

She goes on to applaud UK Prime Minister David Cameron's initiative to sequence 100,000 people and create a national database. "This database alone will trigger tremendous understanding of the genome and fuel medical innovation," Wojcicki writes, adding that "the genetic revolution is here."

It would be appropriate

Submitted by dave.egerter on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 15:10.

It would be appropriate journalism to note that there's conflict of interest in this news, seeing as how Ms Wojcicki's company is in the business of genetic analysis. Come on people, just because she's married to a Google bizillionaire doesn't mean she should get a free pass.

hahaha what a joke... its

Submitted by elmatos on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 19:16.

hahaha what a joke... its been proved that it doesn't change one thing. Do you think a fat slop barely able to tie their shoes and look at themselves in the mirror will give a crap about your test. Overtest everyone while your lobby is at it... what junk. Even a cheap pair of running shoes would do a better job.

wow... where did those

Submitted by curt on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 21:36.

wow... where did those replies come from. Being the CEO of a personal genetics company makes her an expert and I am glad to see her thoughts. And yes, there are a lot of people who wouldn't respond to such information. But the health and fitness industry is by some accounts a $26B industry and I'm certain that the personal genetics market will grow faster than the industry overall.

It won't be long that in addition to knowing our genome, we will have constant monitoring of our vitamin levels, insulin, blood oxygen, which we will use to modify our behavior on a daily basis... and MS Wojcicki and other entrepreneurs will enable us to do so.

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Currently, Johnson's work focuses on developing tools. During the early days of genome-wide association studies, he noticed that it was difficult for researchers to compare results generated across various array platforms. In conjunction with scientists at the Broad Institute, he developed a tool called SNAP to do just that. "[It] was pretty successful in terms of allowing people to rapidly query for proxy markers, but also just to do basic annotation of SNPs, like chromosome position, gene, and also to do plotting for regional genetic association plots," he says.
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Kevin Hrusovsky is resigning his post at PerkinElmer as senior VP and president of the Life Science and Technology division. Hrusovsky will serve as a consultant to the company for up to one year, beginning in June. He joined PerkinElmer through the company's acquisition of Caliper Life Sciences, where he was CEO and president.

Hologic has appointed former Beckman Coulter head Scott Garrett to its board of directors, where he will serve on the corporate development committee.
Garrett currently is an operating partner with Water Street Healthcare Partners, a private equity firm. Garrett spent 10 years at Beckman Coulter, where he was chairman, president, and CEO.

Gina Costa is now senior director of genomic applications at Illumina. She joins Illumina from Life Technologies, where she was senior director of genetic analysis, working on development of the Ion Torrent and SOLiD sequencing technologies. She has also held positions at Agencourt Bioscience and Roche's 454 Life Sciences.

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On-demand recording available here.

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