Two weeks ago, i was talking with Mihalis about the possibilities and challenges that DNA sequencing will bring to our society. We went on and imagined a bunch of scenarios and questions. What if your test would tell you that you are predisposed to get a certain illness? Would you want to know it? (Actually here I heard both definite yes and no’s up to now… with no’s being more numerous though :) But what if the test would tell you that you are not in danger of getting heart disease, for example? Would you do less exercising? And what if 9 years from now, a new study discoveres that you actually are in danger because of a different genetic polymorphism? And what if the analyses said that you have a very high chance of getting a fatal disease 2 years from now? Would you live different?

Would you want to know the DNA compatibility of the person you are dating? And the next natural step, the automation, will come when the matching can be applied on a large database of candidates. Would you let the system automatically pick the person you are dating based on DNA analysis? I can imagine a system where you would submit a query which would return the genomes that combined with yours would make it possible to attain certain characteristics of the relationship or the offspring (see the story linked at the end of the entry). Would you then choose intelligent kids? Or sporty? Or a combination of the two with a bit of artistic feeling? Sure, the query will return a list of persons that match your optimum, but you would have to go down on the list until you find a person for which you are the answer to their query… And then again, even if you found a match what would that mean? It would be a mere probability. Say, the system computes a 60% chance of obtaining your desired qualities in your kids, would you choose immediately? Or maybe wait a few more months, in the hope that another person would join the system and you would find a better match. But you might loose the current match while waiting for the next.

And what if you don’t want to analize your DNA? And what if somebody else does the analysis for you without you even knowing it?

Many what if’s, right?

Saturday I was on the train, reading the NY Times, and was pretty surprised to see that there are a few companies in California and one in Finland who offer sequencing services for around 1000. Now that’s a big price, and they do not sequence the entire DNA but rather analyze a few hundred thousand specific locations known to differ between genotypes and be responsible for specific physical traits and diseases. In the same time, some of the questions that i mentioned earlier already become relevant (do you want to know your predispositions to heart disease?, etc.). The price is big but it will go down while the completness of extracted info will increase.

And then, 10 years from now when more of the aforementioned questions will be relevant you will remember that you first read them on my blog :)

A nice related short fiction story: Results
A related NY Times article: My Genome, …_