mario a. spinthiras

Made simple , 23andme is a company founded in 2007 by Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki (Google Co-founder Sergey Brin’s Wife) in an attempt to offer a personalized service to the analysis of your DNA. This meaning that you provide a sample of your saliva (yes you spit in a tube) and ship it to them. Once this is done you sit back and wait for 2-8 weeks and expect answers about yourself that you could have never known before.

To elaborate a little on what 23andme does , they offer you a service in which you provide your DNA in the form of saliva , they analyze your DNA and then they simply produce human readable information even to the least of biology buffs out there that can understand more about themselves. A complete index of your DNA much like the way Google indexes your blogs , your websites and much of everything online today.

I first stumbled across a video that had a biter taste towards Google that mentioned how they are trying to gain complete world order and all that stuff. Being the Google fan that I am I had to search more to validate anything on what they are saying regarding Google investing ina  genetics project like this and make sure that Google has not gone sour in any way. The video is available for you below for your own viewing pleasure and personal judgment.

Originally I thought they were right but then you remember how Google is always the faithful service that will never let you down , protects privacy , makes sure nobody else has information about you and always say no to anyone knocking on their door for access to their information. The way I see it they are the information age superheros and not some evil master planner to take over the world. Some people just over do it when they play too much with Premier or Window Movie Maker don’t they.

Moving back to DNA indexing (or so to call it) it would be good to know that Google invested a healthy 3.9 Million USD in 23andMe.

A year after the launch of this service the website has an extraordinary amount of information about each user , their family tree , DNA comparisons and even sharing options to share your DNA information with other users in the 23andme community.

How it works. It’s pretty simple. You pay a whopping $1000 USD to them via their website , they dispatch a spit box thing that you put a large amount of spit in (don’t eat prior to this) and you send it back to them. Anything from 2-8 weeks later you get your results and you can login with your account information to view them.

Surely from experiences read of the Internet and the demo tech talk that the founders of 23andme had at Google can tell you plenty about yourself that you didn’t know.

The big idea according to the founders is to speed up DNA research for the most part due into medical research. They both feel very strong that DNA research isn’t pushing it enough and they quoted the possibilities to be able to take your DNA profile in the form of human readable facts to your doctor will take 100 years from today while as they have commitments put out for changing this in the next five years. To be able to know what you are prone to get ill from in the future or analyze vasts amount of DNA information into clever documents about yourself , well I think thats revolutionary enough. They also seem to be very keen on publishing Genome Journals on the website with crazy fast research that allows users to educate themselves in the most swift manner on their own DNA and how it affects their lives currently and in the future. This would be only reasonable since I know very few genetic researchers in my life personally.

Luckily they have a demo available on their website that displays the information that you would get if your DNA was there. I am closing with the Google tech talk video where the founders provided extensive technical talks (with a bit of humor) on the 23andMe service.

Note: I am thinking of taking the test myself in the future.