Re:All Those 23andMe Spit Tests Were Part of a Bigger Plan
by farresito on Monday November 08, 2021 @03:01PM
(#29153522)
The issue with SNPs is that they are generally common in the population, and a variant that is common will rarely have a big effect. If we look at GWAS studies, most of them do not explain much of the variance of a phenotype. It either is due to environment/epigenetics or we are not using the right data. Part of it is of course the former, but I'm betting on the latter. I'm not a researcher, so I could of course be very wrong.
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Re:All Those 23andMe Spit Tests Were Part of a Bigger Plan
by mbreese on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @12:15AM
(#29157991)
There is a difference in scale. For the research 23andme wants to do, they need to identify variants that occur in a significant part of the population (~1% or so). They need to do this because any potential drug/treatment would have to be developed for a big enough patient pool. Large population level genome studies like 1000 genomes and NIH All of Us studies are all aimed at finding those ~1% variants.
But if you’re looking for what is going on in an individual, then yes… SNP chip data isn’t as informative as whole genome (or exome) sequencing.