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Personal genetics company 23andme is taking it further

The personal genetics start up company 23andme is taking a step further in getting into peoples mind. After advertising on web space through its parent company Google(One of the investor in this company is wife of Google's co-owner), its now looking into new avenues to get the word out to the public to get their genes tested for disease risks.

One can only imagine the extent of competition in this growing field of personal genetics. As a population geneticist, working for one of the molecular biology companies, I can see so many companies coming up in no time that are investing in personal genetics. Some of them made good impression, while others have not lasted long like Geneessence. One of the new ones being Pathway Genomics. Now other successful or atleast in the business being Navigenics and decodeme. Knome is another start up that looks into more details than the other ones mentioned earlier.



Well, there are many coming up and I will let you know one that is coming up in south, probably the first one. I will have to talk about it in future, few months from now. For now, 23andme is the prime interest as its Google owned or partly owned company that is trying to get into people like Google site. However, its a different ball game here as its life sciences and there are many amazing people in this world who knows more than the people at 23andme. So, to cope up with the growing competition and sprouting personal genomics companies, they have to come up with some innovative ideas as this one that has made some interesting news today, as written by none other than Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

I hope that this stunt would help 23andm3 to get the attention it needs to make itself a better "bioinformatics service" and need no license to operate in California. Obviously only a better service and unambiguous results can help get more people get their genome tested for their risks of prominent diseases. Until then, we need to be cautious in predicting the results and making life changing decisions as the results are not always correct and dependable, as mentioned by Dave Rigotti "I’ve spoken with a geneticist (PhD from Harvard) about 23andMe and the information the tests provided. He said, in short, that the data is pretty much useless to an individual and that most factors contributing to a disease are environmental. However, he said that on a very large scale the mapping of the genes could provide valuable research."

One should not just spend money on these tests to know their risks, but should spend time exercising. May be one needs to spend that money on gym to get fit than just knowing the risks and worrying about it.
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