Last weekend 23andMe participated in the Girl Scouts’ Golden Gate Bridging at Crissy Field in San Francisco.

This annual event celebrates middle school girls who are graduating from Junior Girl Scouts to Cadette Girl Scouts. To symbolize this transition, the girls walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. More than 7,000 girls from eight states were in attendance.

We were particularly excited to help out at this event because several of us are former Girl Scouts. Joyce, seen here wearing her Girl Scout sash, attended the Golden Gate Bridging as a participant 20 years ago!

The 23andMe team ran a booth where girls could “translate” their names into the genetic code and then use colored beads to represent their new “DNA aliases” on a zipper pull (click here for instructions).

We had a great time meeting the girls and talking to them about DNA. They seemed to enjoy it too – as one girl assembled her zipper pull she exclaimed, “I never thought today would be so fun!”

After the jump, a few more photos from our day at Crissy Field.

Continue Reading »

Tags: DNA, DNA alias, Girl Scouts

Could this be Lilly Mendel?

The judges have met and a winner has been chosen.

In the first 23andMe Win Your Genome Contest, the challenge was to describe Lilly Mendel – a real person whose data are presented in the 23andMe demo account – based on her genetic information alone. As we declared in the announcement of the contest, entries were judged based on accuracy, creativity and cleverness.

Cleverness we got. More than one entrant actually claimed to BE Lilly Mendel. Many entries employed flattery by concentrating on Lilly’s physical attractiveness, intelligence and athletic ability – very clever.

As for creativity, we have no idea where some of you got the idea that Lilly’s family harbors a secret fear of “gigantism,” that she enjoys dancing the tango or that her nose twitches when she gets angry. And though her genes may indicate a preference for the bignay fruit, we have no idea if she has ever tasted it.

But the clear winner in all three categories was Mike Cariaso, who sent us a detailed description based on data from the SNPedia database, an online compendium of genetic associations. Using software he has written (and made publicly available) that evaluates raw 23andMe data using the SNPedia database, he assembled a formidable description of Lilly. Its accuracy may have suffered a bit from the author’s speculation, but the creativity of those conjectures more than made up for it.

Click here to see Mike’s entry, which he posted on the SNPedia page (you can also see it after the jump). The description is annotated with SNPs and brief descriptions of what he gleaned from each of them.

As the winner of our first contest, Mike receives the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ for a person of his choice. We thank everyone else who entered, and encourage you to enter the next one, which should be announced in a few weeks.

Continue Reading »

Tags: 23andMe, Lilly Mendel, Personal Genome Service, SNPedia

One of the most exciting aspects of archaeology is how new research can alter previously held notions about prehistoric events. One of the most hotly debated of these events is the peopling of the Americas. Theories on the timing and specifics of the arrival of the first Americans are modified continuously as new evidence from the fossil, paleoclimatic and genetic records is examined.

A study in last month’s American Journal of Human Genetics argued for an ancient and fast migration of prehistoric humans across the Bering Strait and down the Pacific Coast based on a genetic analysis of present-day Native Americans. That study was provocative because it significantly pushed back the arrival date of humans to the New World, to 18,000 years ago from the previous estimate of 13,000 years.

Now, results from a new study in this week’s Science further bolster that theory, this time using the prevalence of preserved seaweed as an indicator. Continue Reading »

Tags: Americas, Archaeology, Seaweed

Multiple studies have indicated that a SNP in the FGFR2 gene can increase the risk for breast cancer. Results published online this week in the open-access journal PLoS Biology show how.

It turns out that the riskier version of this SNP increases the amount of the FGFR2 protein that is made by cells, which can stimulate cells to grow – and increases the chance that they will proliferate out of control and lead to cancer.

Though the number of genome wide association studies is growing every day, very few of these studies have been able to explain why the SNPs they find are associated with a particular disease. Understanding how SNPs impact the biology of cancer and other common diseases will be critical for developing new treatments.

Continue Reading »

Tags: breast cancer, cancer, FGFR2, SNPs

One of the most exciting parts of 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service™ is discovering your genetic ancestry. Suddenly your family tree has branches that reach back thousands of years into the prehistoric past.

At present, 23andMe customers can trace two branches of their genetic family tree – one that follows the all-female line on the maternal side (through mitochondrial DNA) and another the all-male line on the paternal side (through the Y chromosome).

Not all DNA is created equal, however: males have both mitochondrial DNA AND a Y chromosome, so they can trace both their maternal and paternal ancestry. Females, who have mitochondrial DNA but no Y chromosome, can trace only their maternal ancestry.

So how can females discover their paternal history? One solution is to ‘borrow’ the Y chromosome of her most immediate paternal ancestor – her father. A female can have her father send his own DNA sample to 23andMe, then examine his Y chromosome as a way of understanding his paternal ancestry and her own.

But what if a woman’s father can’t or won’t share his DNA? By sharing 23andMe accounts with the right male relative, a woman can still discover both her maternal and paternal ancestry.

So whose DNA can a female customer use, besides her father’s? It could be anyone who shares his Y chromosome – her brother, paternal uncle (father’s brother), or even paternal grandfather (father’s father). The chart below illustrates some of the possibilities in one woman’s family tree; male relatives who share her father’s Y chromosome are depicted in blue.

You may look at the chart and ask: Why not her son’s Y? After all, he’s a male relative, too. But even though a mother shares 50% of her genes with each of her children, only fathers pass Y chromosomes to their sons. So any examination of her son’s Y chromosome would yield not her father’s paternal history, but her husband’s.

The woman whose family tree is shown here (”Me”) could determine her paternal ancestry using the Y chromosomes of males who are colored blue.

Tags: ancestry, paternal ancestry, Y-chromosome

The Atkins diet, the South Beach diet, the Grapefruit diet, the Cabbage Soup diet – we know all these fad diets have their limits, because ultimately, the only way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories and burn more.

But have you ever thought about what controls your appetite? What if your body didn’t tell you to stop eating when you’d consumed enough calories?

You’d gain weight, that’s what. It’s long been known that mutations in a gene called MC4R cause mice to become bigger and fatter than their regular counterparts. It’s thought that eating a lot causes the body to turn on MC4R, which in turn tells the mice to stop eating by making them feel full. There are also rare variations that disrupt the human MC4R protein and cause children to eat too much, leading to severe childhood obesity.

Interesting, you say, but does this apply to the general population too? Research published online Sunday in the journal Nature Genetics suggests that the answer is yes.

Continue Reading »

Tags: BMI, body mass, body weight, MC4R, obesity

Sometimes our customers ask us about the accuracy of their 23andMe data. How certain are we that they really do have the genotypes we report?

The answer is, very certain. We typically claim that the genotyping technology we use reports the correct call for more than 99.9 percent of the approximately 580,000 single-letter DNA variations we report. Those variations, known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, are the raw data upon which the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ is built.

But apparently one of our customers decided to do more than ask. He designed a simple experiment to test the reproducibility of the SNP chips that 23andMe and other companies use to give people access to their genetic data.

Antonio C.B. Oliveira signed himself up for 23andMe and a similar service, then wrote a computer program to compare the genotype calls at the 560,299 SNPs where both companies reported data. He found a grand total of 23 discrepancies, or about 0.004% of the common reported SNPs.

“This error rate seems to me to be quite acceptable,” Oliveira concluded on Longa Vista, a blog he established to share his results.

Continue Reading »

Tags: 23andMe, Craig Venter, SNPs

Ever since the social media site Facebook allowed users to develop third-party applications, there has been an explosion of various quizzes, icons, and virtual gifts that users can add to each others’ profiles. In addition to the various LOLcats, zombies, and werewolves that permeate Facebook these days, users of the site can now send each other genes courtesy of Genome Alberta, which supports genomic research in the Canadian province.
Continue Reading »

Tags: Facebook, Genome Alberta, social networking

SNPwatch gives you the latest news about research linking various traits and conditions to individual genetic variations. These studies are exciting because they offer a glimpse into how genetics may affect our bodies and health; but in most cases, more work is needed before this research can provide information of value to individuals. For that reason it is important to remember that like all information we provide, the studies we describe in SNPwatch are for research and educational purposes only. SNPwatch is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice; you should always seek the advice of your physician or other appropriate healthcare professional with any questions you may have regarding diagnosis, cure, treatment or prevention of any disease or other medical condition.

The amount of sugar in the bloodstream must be tightly controlled. Too much can cause damage to nerves, blood vessels and organs. But too little sugar starves the body, especially the brain, of the energy it needs.

Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels are a measure of how well a person’s body can control blood sugar levels, a process that goes awry in diabetes. A report published online today in Science Express finds that FPG levels can be impacted by single-letter variations in genes known to be involved in blood sugar regulation.

Continue Reading »

Tags: blood sugar, diabetes, glucose, SNP

This woman shares 99.5% of her DNA with Lilly Mendel.

Team 23andMe likes games – Wii tennis and Segway polo are big here. So are friendly wagers over a new employee’s ACTN3 genotype, or whether a given Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation will converge during our lifetimes.

So in the spirit of friendly competition, we’re starting the 23andMe Win Your Genome Contest. The winner gets our Personal Genome Service™ for one person of his or her choice.

Everybody else gets to try again the next time, as we’re planning on holding a new contest every month or so (though we may skip a month from time to time).

The winner of our inaugural competition will be the person who can best describe Lilly Mendel, a real person whose genetic data can be seen with a free 23andMe demo account.

We don’t require you to include any particular characteristics, but obviously the major physical traits in Gene Journal (height, weight, eye color, etc.) are a good place to start.

Creative speculation is allowed and encouraged. Think you know where Lilly’s grandparents were born? Her favorite movie? Her sleeping habits? Anything goes, but you must justify every element of your description with some aspect of Lilly’s genetic data. So even if you think you know who Lilly is based on other lines of reasoning, you’ll still need a SNP and a convincing or at least amusing argument as to why you think it indicates an inordinate fondness for the Beatles.

Entries will be judged on an entirely subjective scale – the winner will be whichever description we consider the best based on accuracy, creativity and cleverness. The winner’s description will be revealed on this blog – but Lilly’s identity will not.

Send your entries to contest@23andme.com. The deadline is midnight Pacific time on Friday, May 9. One final note: We can accept entries only from United States residents who are 18 years of age and older.

Want to know every last detail? There’s a ton of fine print after the jump.

Photo from V2-Media/istockphoto

Continue Reading »

Tags: 23andMe, contest, genome, win