Re:Man places his genome in public domain, on Github
by ryanlower on Saturday February 12, 2011 @09:02PM
(#2211809)
I agree, but still applaud Manu's release of something many consider so private.
Even though this isn't a genome sequence, there is potential for interesting analyses if lots of people release their 23andme data. (I believe 23andme use the same SNPs for every user).
It's by no means all of his SNPs, either -- each person has around 3 million actual SNPs (variations from the reference genome), and 23andme just chooses a million sites that could be the location of a SNP to look at, most of which won't actually be points of variation for most people.
So, 23andme is only looking for common SNPs you might have. If you have a rare SNP you're interested in, or if you're a researcher trying to analyze the effects of an uncommon SNP, you're out of luck with 23andme data.