If you come across a website for a genetic testing start-up called The Perfect 46, which purports to use genomics to help people find mates that will give them the healthiest offspring, don't be taken in and try to get an appointment.
The firm is actually a faux business, and its website is a marketing gimmick to promote a new science fiction film called The Perfect 46, which is about a company also called the Perfect 46.
Independent filmmaker Brett Ryan Bonowicz wrote and directed the flick, about a geneticist who creates a website to help people find their idea mates, at least for creating ideal offspring, but then, deliciously, "something goes horribly wrong," Joanne Manaster says at the PsiVid blog.
"In a refreshing change of pace, this movie handles the science of genomics quite adeptly," Manaster writes.
Whenever a movie has any hint of a waft of a genetics theme in the plot the comparison's to Gattaca are inevitable, and Bonowicz says he hears that a lot. But Manaster notes that author and Duke faculty member Misha Angrist has commented that now he may have something other than Gattaca to show to his genomics classes.
And Bonowicz doesn't mind having his film lumped in with the flagship genetics sci-fi flick. "[B]oth films are a reflection of the time they were made and the fears and anxieties of where they're going next," he says.
Of course, testing services like in The Perfect 46 are still a ways off in the future, aren't they?
Probably not, New Scientist notes. Startup GenePeeks' Matchright technology virtually mixes two people's DNA to create a "digital embryo" that will enable prospective parents to screen for genetic disorders, it adds.