When you mail a letter, do you lick the envelope?

I take it that was a rhetorical question?

In case it wasn't, the answer is 'yes', but I'd be somewhat surprised to learn that the recipient went through the trouble of retrieving my DNA from it, stores it in a database and sells the contents of that database, along with any personal information that I have voluntarily shared with them.

Sounds like a business idea, send out 'surveys' and analyze the envelope when it's returned. Sell the data to insurance co. Who wants in?

That's really evil but pretty clever.

Why don't you mail me your proposal ;) ?

Of course the next step would be to create clones or use their genes in breeding programs. Hard to see exactly where the monetisation would come from. Probably evil as guess.

Clever - But wouldn't this be illegal? Or not yet?

What law would make it illegal?

The Red Queen strikes again.

Another advantage to email: they can't be licked.

brilliant!

It's not possible to do it anonymously?

I'm really not sure on how to make this even more clear, but your DNA is your identity, so when you give it to someone they have your identity and no amount of anonymization is going to change that.

All you're missing is the metadata of 'name, date of birth, social security number' and so on. But that's just a system we've placed on top of 'who you are', which is your genes.

Your fingerprint, your retina scan, your full lifes history, nothing in that list will identify you as good as your DNA does.

So once you have someones DNA you can reconnect it with the rest of the information at any point in the future by simply checking to see where that DNA turns up again, including fractions of it in your descendants.

You can't really anonymize it.

So do identical twins count for one person?

And so do clones, from a genetic point of view.

So if you and your identical twin brother or sister are both going to apply to 23andme for an analysis you should get back the same results, and if your identical twin brother or sister commits a murder and hightails it to zanzibar you are in a lot of trouble if their dna is found at the crimescene and you happened to be in the neighbourhood.

The number of identical twins is low enough that for the larger part of this discussion you can leave them out of the equation, they're the exception that confirms the rule, the differences in DNA are very subtle, and afaik will not be readily detected in a normal analysis.

Identical twins don't have the same DNA.

Random link of Google: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/health/11real.html

I think you misread the point GP is making he is suggesting that because identical twins have the same DNA (more so than other people says the article linked) according to my logic they must be the same person, whereas it is obvious they are not.

Of course they are not, but for 99.6% of humanity the rule that your DNA is (very) unique holds true, and for identical twins even if their DNA is even more similar it is not 100% the same.

Clones (which do not exist (yet, or at least, human clones)) are the other exception.

Clones won't have identical DNA for the same reason that twins don't.

You mean because of copy errors ?

I think they are referring to epigenetic changes (silencing/methylation). At the genetic level, they should have identical DNA if they arose firm the same egg/sperm combo.

Those are epigenetics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics ) differeces. DNA sequence is identical in identical twins.

True, but not every cell in your body has the same DNA either. Mutations happen with every cell replication.

not with every cell replication. that would certainly be pathological!