Genetic Testing: 23andme

A while back, the personal genetic testing company 23andme offered a special sale. They discounted their normal price from $500 to $99 for one day only. Naturally, I jumped on it.

Just got my results back. Nothing particularly surprising here, but it is neat.

• My blood type is A (A/O). I knew this, good to see it backed up by genetics. 🙂
• I have an elevated risk for Type I and II diabetes (no news here, my sister is diabetic).
• Apparently, I can’t taste “bitter”. This does explain why I love Brussels Sprouts.
• I’m lactose intolerant. I was pretty sure of this already.
• I have a natural resistance to norovirus (stomach flu). Didn’t know that.
• I am a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis. I don’t have it, but it’s possible that my children could.
• I am a slow caffeine metabolizer. It says that drinking coffee increases my heart attack risk (duh), but I’m not sure what this really means. Caffeine typically doesn’t do a thing to me, at least not immediately. I go through a fair amount of it on a regular basis.
• Paternal Haplogroup: I1*, Maternal Haplogroup: H1. This basically makes my ancestry 100% European. Very vanilla there. However, this does conflict with my known ancestry slightly, in that it says I don’t have any Native American ancestors (within 5 generations). But then again, I don’t have a whole lot of reliable information on that branch of the family tree.

There’s a ton more information (apparently I’d respond really well to Interferon Beta Therapy, whatever the hell that is), and I haven’t gone through it all yet.

One thing I did note is that they do allow you to download the raw data, which is pretty cool. However when I looked at it, I noticed that it’s not a complete record of your DNA, just a sampling. Basically it’s like 500,000 markers of it instead of the full 3 billion or whatever. Clearly you don’t need the complete sequence to draw useful information out of it.

Still, kinda neat that this is within the reach of the average person.