Category Archives: Transhuman News

Veritas Genetics had big plans to lower the price of sequencing the human genome, making it on par with the price of buying an Apple Watch or a fancy dinner.

The company, which was the first in the world to map out a person's DNA for less than $1,000 back in 2016, just shared with customers via email that it is ceasing operations in the U.S.

"Due to an unexpected adverse financing situation, we are being forced to suspend our operations in the U.S. for the time being," the email, which was viewed by CNBC, reads. "We are currently assessing all paths forward, including strategic options."

The company also laid off the bulk of its employees based in the U.S., about 50 people, earlier this week, according to a source familiar with the company. The source asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak for Veritas Genetics.

"I can clarify this temporarily affects U.S. operations only," a spokesperson for the company said. "All of the customers outside of the U.S. will continue to be served by Veritas Europe and Latin America."

Veritas, which made this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list, hoped to expand to millions more consumers in the coming years by bringing down the price of whole genome sequencing to just a few hundred dollars. It raised more than $50 million in financing since it got its start in 2015.

But the company's investors, including Simcere Pharmaceutical and Lilly Asia Ventures, are based in China, at a time when the Trump administration is cracking down on Chinese firms making investments in U.S. companies. Earlier this year, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States,or CFIUS, forced a health-tech company called PatientsLikeMe to find a buyer after ordering its Chinese owner to divest its stake. PatientsLikeMe eventually sold to UnitedHealth.

For Veritas, it meant that new investors who were interested in the business got skittish because of the potential for oversight from CFIUS, according to the person familiar with the company. As a result, Veritas has also been in talks with potential acquirers in recent months, said the person.

If Veritas is able to figure out a path forward, it hopes to be competitive with companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe by offering more information for about the same price. 23andMe has dabbled with offering sequencing to its customers, but currently provides only genotyping services, meaning it looks at specific parts of the genome which are known to be associated with a certain condition or trait.

While 23andMe and Ancestry primarily sell tests for people interested in their ancestral composition and wellness traits, Veritas has long stressed that it's different because it provides potentially actionable insights into its users' health.

Veritas' decision to stop selling its tests in the U.S. comes as other consumer-facing DNA testing companies report that sales have slowed. One potential factor is that people have grown more concerned about protecting their privacy, especially in the wake of high-profile news events such as the Golden State Killer case. That stoked fears about whether individuals could be found and convicted for past crimes based on distant relatives' DNA.

But for Veritas, which bills itself as more of a medical company, sales of its tests have been increasing since it dropped its price in July, according to the person familiar.

Veritas in November experienced a security breach that included some customer information, the start-up confirmed to Bloomberg. The company stressed that only a handful of people were affected.

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Veritas Genetics, the start-up that can sequence a human genome for less than $600, ceases US operations and is in talks with potential buyers - CNBC

Its that time of year again an avalanche of ads urging us to drool into tubes so companies can spit back verdicts on our pasts, presents, and futures. Judging from my emails, those unceasing ads have inspired many questions about genetics in general.

Among the emails that pinged in recently:

So I started a list of my e-mails, with apologies to Hillary, and extracted three recurring themes: transgender identity, when a human life begins, and by far the largest group: interpreting DNA test results, either consumer or clinical.

What do you think about a new studythat found 20 genetic markers of transgender identity? asked a reporter from The Times of London In March 2018. Id suggested just such a study a year earlier, which hed found here.

Impressed with the study, I agreed to comment. But the reporter forgot to distinguish me from the researcher, and so throughout Europe, I was suddenly an expert on transgender genes. And that inspired some telling emails.

The first, from a trans woman born in 1948, shared her 70-page story:

As far back as I can remember I thought nothing of going into my mothers closet, pulling down her nightgowns, and putting them on. They were soft, they smelled of her, and they felt so perfect. This was me. Everything feminine fascinated me. Anything male repelled me. I wanted to emerge myself in the female world. But no matter what I did, I just couldnt look like Mommy.

Another transgender woman wrote:

I would love to have that degree of certainty that a genetic study would show. Parents would be able to perhaps work with their children instead of ignoring it either intentionally or out of ignorance.

A recent email from 58-year-old Edith brought up nature v nurture:

Two of my nine nieces and nephews are transitioning. My family has an overall fluid concept of gender identity, which we discussed with each other before either child made it known they were trans. I find myself wondering if this is true in other families.

Me too.

I repost 17 timepoints whenever womens reproductive rights are threatened, or I read or hear a comment that indicates ignorance of biology. The idea of the list came to me when considering that an embryos genome turns on at day 5, but it cant possibly exist at that point outside of a womans body.

One woman asked about fetal rights. Her ex had given her an herbal abortion tea without her knowledge when she was pregnant. Her baby so far is healthy, but she wants a court to recognize the tea-poisoning as child abuse. At what point in utero does a fetus have rights? It seems to vary state to state, she wrote.

Celia Collias, a statistics major at the University of North Carolina, offered a compelling perspective: distinguishing two types of viability. Natural ability to be physiologically independent for a human fetus is around 24 weeks. Technologically assisted viability for a human fetus is 21 weeks.

If we dont use natural viability as the cut off for reproductive rights, Ms. Collias argues, then those rights will erode as technology sets back the age of assisted viability:

Technologically assisted viability is not free. If we allow that to be the benchmark, its going to cost society a lot to care for all those fetuses where would that money come from?

Good question.

Is he really my brother? asked the woman who sent me scanned columns of genetic markers. I circled 16 of 38 that they share and sent it back: Yes.

I dont have mutations in BRCA1 or 2, so Im ok, right? I do have a mutation in ATM (or p53 or CHEK2 or PTEN or RAD51 or a few dozenothers). Inherited mutations for cancer risk go beyond the most common ones in the BRCA pair, and altogether they account for only 5 percent of cases. Yes, shes at high risk.

BRCA brings up the limited variant problem. Consumer DNA tests, for cancer or single-gene diseases, are likely to check for only the most common variants, such as a handful of mutations in the CFTR gene behind cystic fibrosis, which has more than 1,700. These health reports may provide a false sense of reassurance and should not be used for making any health decisions without confirmation testing, said Edward Esplin, MD, of Invitae, a clinical testing company, at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in October, catalyzing a flood of headlines.

I had a prenatal screen for 125 genes and one is a variant of uncertain significance. What the heck is a VUS? Do I have a mutation or not?

A VUS is a gene variant that isnt common, but hasnt shown up in someone with a disease and reported in the medical literature. Yet. I explain here.

My ethnicity estimate changed overnight. Huh? When an ancestry company adds a new group to its database of reference populations, the sections of those pie charts can shift, or a new one appear.

Im 20 weeks pregnant. The fetus has a microduplication of chromosome 18. Is that a problem? The healthy dad-to-be also had the tiny extra bit of DNA. So, no.

I just found out that I have an extra Y chromosome. Ive had severe acne since my early teens, and today Im 62 and weigh 295 pounds. Im a biker, football player, and served time for selling pot. Did my extra chromosome get me arrested?

Probably not. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, before decriminalization, was more likely at fault.

Because most of my email brings up medical matters, heres a short guide to getting help in making sense of DNA test results related to health. (For interpreting ancestry findings, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy is an excellent resource.)

Its important to distinguish consumer DNA tests, which anyone can take by purchasing a kit and spitting or swizzling a cheekbrush, from clinical DNA tests, which a health care provider orders and the FDAs Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) regulate.

Like mushrooms materializing after a warm rain, articles, websites, books and companies are springing up to help consumers navigate test-taking and interpretation.

Finding an expert specifically trained at the graduate level in genetics a genetic counselor, PhD geneticist, or MD with genetics/genomics training is challenging because their priorities are in clinical testing, not the entertainment/education space that the consumer companies so ceaselessly promote. Other scientists may be helpful molecular biologists, biochemists but genetics as a discipline transcends DNA, including developmental, transmission, and population and evolutionary genetics too. Ancestry testing in particular melds these levels of genetics.

Assuming a sit-down with an expert to intrepret consumer DNA data isnt happening easily, here are some places to turn.

A longstanding helpful website is Genetics Home Reference, from the NIH.

A newer resource is this report from ConsumersAdvocate.org. Their researchers recently sent DNA anonymously to 9 leading consumer DNA testing companies, interpreted the data, and then wrote a detailed, clear analysis that compares the services, privacy/security measures, online resources, and cost of tests.

Consumer DNA testing is a fast-growing industry with over 26 million users worldwide. That number is expected to grow to 100 million by 2021, Sam Klau, Community Outreach at the organization, told me.

An excellent new book is DNA Nation: How the Internet of Genes is Changing Your Life, by PhD molecular biologist Sergio Pistoi. And my human genetics textbook will be out in a new edition in September. Ive added a chapter called The Genetics of Identity, inspired by having my past rewritten recently thanks to ancestry testing.

The testing company websites, like that of 23andme, provide clear and well-written info on interpreting test results. But without any prior knowledge of genetics, misinterpretation and misplaced angst can arise.

Does the average person know the difference in significance between revealing a pattern of genome-wide single-base variations (SNPs) associated with elevated risk of a trait or illness, and detecting a well-studied mutation in a single gene?

The raw data dump from consumer DNA testing can be overwhelming, and to paraphrase Elizabeth Warren: Theres a company for that. A consumer can pay to avoid bushwhacking through dense SNP forests.

Strategene, for example, is a genetic reporting tool that uses 23andMe data to identify SNPs in a few dozen well-studied, health-related genes, and not every SNP under the sun. The $45 is a sound investment; it would take hours to sort through Google Scholar to DIY. But the client needs to know about the limited variant issue of checking only for common SNPs.

(I was briefly fooled into confusing the company with 1980s biotech giant Stratagene, but its off by one letter and one capitalization. The only person named on the company website is a naturopath referred to many times as Dr., which wouldnt necessarily denote a genetics expert.)

Im curious to see how soon the medical profession catches up. Right now, genetic counselors in the US number only about 5,000. But professional organizations are stepping in. The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, for example, offers online continuing medical education, ACMG Genetics 101 for Healthcare Providers.

But doctors Ive encountered recently still go deer-in-the-headlights when I ask a genetics question, just to be obnoxious. And so a company like ActXmakes sense in helping medical professionals keep pace with the growing tide of patients coming in waving consumer DNA test results. The company helps physicians and patients apply 23andMe raw data to select drugs, order clinical tests to help diagnose specific conditions, and to confirm carrier status for single-gene diseases.

When I started my career as a Drosophila geneticist, mutating flies to grow legs out of their heads, I never imagined at-home DNA testing. When I started my career as a science writer and textbook author, I still couldnt have predicted at-home DNA testing. Now that its here, Im thrilled that DNA science has become so much more tangible and practical. Yet we must use the information in our strings of A, C, T, and G wisely.

Ricki Lewis is the GLPs senior contributing writer focusing on gene therapy and gene editing. She has a PhD in genetics and is a genetic counselor, science writer and author of The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It, the only popular book about gene therapy. BIO. Follow her at her website or Twitter @rickilewis

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Does the 'genetics revolution' unsettle you? Here is a guide, and reasons to be hopeful - Genetic Literacy Project

Led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, a study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell reveals a new mechanism that contributes to adult bone maintenance and repair and opens the possibility of developing therapeutic strategies for improving bone healing.

Adult bone repair relies on the activation of bone stem cells, which still remain poorly characterized, said corresponding author Dr. Dongsu Park, assistant professor of molecular and human genetics and of pathology and immunology at Baylor. Bone stem cells have been found both in the bone marrow inside the bone and also in the periosteum the outer layer of tissue that envelopes the bone. Previous studies have shown that these two populations of stem cells, although they share many characteristics, also have unique functions and specific regulatory mechanisms.

Of the two, periosteum stem cells are the least understood. It is known that they comprise a heterogeneous population of cells that can contribute to bone thickness, shaping and fracture repair, but scientists had not been able to distinguish between different subtypes of bone stem cells to study how their different functions are regulated.

In the current study, Park and his colleagues developed a method to identify different subpopulations of periosteum stem cells, define their contribution to bone fracture repair in live mouse models and identify specific factors that regulate their migration and proliferation under physiological conditions.

Periosteal stem cells are major contributors to bone healing

The researchers discovered specific markers for periosteum stem cells in mouse models. The markers identified a distinct subset of stem cells that contributes to life-long adult bone regeneration.

We also found that periosteum stem cells respond to mechanical injury by engaging in bone healing, Park said. They are important for healing bone fractures in the adult mice and, interestingly, their contribution to bone regeneration is higher than that of bone marrow stem cells.

In addition, the researchers found that periosteal stem cells also respond to inflammatory molecules called chemokines, which are usually produced during bone injury. In particular, they responded to chemokine CCL5.

Periosteal stem cells have receptors molecules on their cell surface that bind to CCL5, which sends a signal to the cells to migrate toward the injured bone and repair it. Deleting the CCL5 gene in mouse models resulted in marked defects in bone repair or delayed healing. When the researchers supplied CCL5 to CCL5-deficient mice, bone healing was accelerated.

The findings suggested potential therapeutic applications. For instance, in individuals with diabetes or osteoporosis in which bone healing is slow and may lead to other complications resulting from limited mobility, accelerating bone healing may reduce hospital stay and improve prognosis.

Our findings contribute to a better understanding of how adult bones heal. We think this is one of the first studies to show that bone stem cells are heterogeneous and that different subtypes have unique properties regulated by specific mechanisms, Park said. We have identified markers that enable us to tell bone stem cell subtypes apart and studied what each subtype contributes to bone health. Understanding how bone stem cell functions are regulated offers the possibility to develop novel therapeutic strategies to treat adult bone injuries.

Reference

Ortinau et al. (2019) Identification of Functionally Distinct Mx1+SMA+ Periosteal Skeletal Stem Cells. Cell Stem Cell. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2019.11.003

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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New Mechanism of Bone Maintenance and Repair Discovered - Technology Networks

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Genetics just got personal. So boasted the website of 23andMe in 2008, just after launching its DNA testing service.

As we entered this decade, a small cohort of companies 23andMe, its Silicon Valley neighbor Navigenics, and Icelandic competitor deCODE Genetics were selling a future of personalized medicine: Patients would hold the keys to longer and healthier lives by understanding the risks written into their DNA and working with their doctors to reduce them.

We all carry this information, and if we bring it together and democratize it, we could really change health care, 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki told Time magazine when it dubbed the companys DNA test 2008s invention of the year, beating out Elon Musks Tesla Roadster.

But in reality, the 2010s would be when genetics got social. As the decade comes to a close, few of us have discussed our genes with our doctors, but millions of us have uploaded our DNA profiles to online databases to fill in the details of our family trees, explore our ethnic roots, and find people who share overlapping sequences of DNA.

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Its become like Facebook for genes, driven by the same fundamental human desire to connect. And, as with Mark Zuckerbergs social media behemoth, this is the decade we reckoned with what it really means to hand over some of our most personal data in the process.

A 23andMe saliva collection kit for DNA testing.

It all panned out differently from the way I imagined in 2009, when I paid $985 to deCODE and $399 to 23andMe to put my DNA into the service of science journalism. (I spared my then-employer, New Scientist magazine, the $2,500 charge for the boutique service offered by Navigenics.)

I was intrigued by the potential of DNA testing for personalized medicine, but from the beginning, I was also concerned about privacy. I imagined a future in which people could steal our medical secrets by testing the DNA we leave lying around on discarded tissues and coffee cups. In 2009, a colleague and I showed that all it took to hack my genome in this way was a credit card, a private email account, a mailing address, and DNA testing companies willing to do business without asking questions.

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Much of the rest of what I wrote about DNA testing back then reflected pushback from leading geneticists who argued that the companies visions of personalized medicine werent ready for primetime.

As I explored the reports offered by 23andMe and deCODE, I couldnt help but agree especially when deCODE wrongly concluded that I carry two copies of a variant of a gene that would give me a 40% lifetime chance of developing Alzheimers. (Luckily, it wasnt cause for panic. Id pored over my DNA in enough detail by then to know that I carry only one copy, giving me a still-elevated but much less scary lifetime risk of about 13%.)

Despite such glitches, it still seemed that medicine was where the payoffs of mainstream genetic testing were going to be. As costs to sequence the entire genome plummeted, I expected gene-testing firms to switch from using gene chips that scan hundreds of thousands of genetic markers to new sequencing technology that would allow them to record all 3 billion letters of our DNA.

So in 2012, eager to provide our readers with a preview of what was to come, New Scientist paid $999 for me to have my exome sequenced in a pilot project offered by 23andMe. This is the 1.5% of the genome that is read to make proteins and is where the variants that affect our health are most likely to lurk.

Experts at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee analyzed my exome. While they werent at that point able to tell me much of medical significance that I didnt already know, the article I wrote from the experience in 2013 predicted a future in which doctors would routinely scour their patients genomes for potential health problems and prescribe drugs that have been specifically designed to correct the biochemical pathways concerned.

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Im glad I included an important caveat: This may take several decades.

By then, the revolution promised by 23andMe and its competitors was faltering. Navigenics and deCODE had both been acquired by bigger companies and stopped selling DNA tests directly to the public.

23andMe, backed by the deep pockets of Google and other Silicon Valley investors, had enough cash to continue. But it fell foul of the FDA, which had decided that the company was selling medical devices that needed official approval to be put on the market. In a 2013 warning letter, the FDA said that 23andMe had failed to provide adequate evidence that its tests produced accurate results. By the end of 2013, 23andMe had stopped offering assessments of health risks to new customers.

Since then, the company has slowly clawed its way back into the business of health. In 2015, it was given FDA approval to tell customers whether they were carriers for a number of inherited diseases; in 2017, it started providing new customers with assessments of health risks once more.

I recently updated my 23andMe account, getting tested on the latest version of its chip. My results included reports on my genetic risk of experiencing 13 medical conditions. Back in 2013, there were more than 100 such reports, plus assessments of my likely responses to a couple dozen drugs.

In the lab, discovery has continued at a pace, but relatively few findings have found their way into the clinic.

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If youve recently been pregnant, you were probably offered blood tests to tell whether your fetus had a serious genetic abnormality. And if youve been diagnosed with cancer, a biopsy may have been sequenced to look for mutations that make some drugs a good bet and other ones a bust. Neither would have been common a decade ago.

But the wider health care revolution envisaged by Wojcicki remains far off.

A few weeks ago, I saw my doctor to discuss my moderately high blood cholesterol and had a conversation that Id once predicted would be common by now. I had signed up for a project called MyGeneRank, which took my 23andMe data and calculated my genetic risk of experiencing coronary artery disease based on 57 genetic markers, identified in a 2015 study involving more than 180,000 people.

My genetic risk turns out to be fairly low. After I pulled out my phone and showed my doctor the app detailing my results, we decided to hold off on taking a statin for now, while I make an effort to improve my diet and exercise more. But it was clear from her reaction that patients dont usually show up wanting to talk about their DNA.

We have all these naysayers and an immense body of research that is not being used to help patients, said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, which runs the MyGeneRank project.

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Joseph James DeAngelo, the suspected "Golden State Killer," appears in court for his arraignment in Sacramento, April 27, 2018.

23andMes collision with the FDA wound up being a turning point in ways I didnt anticipate at the time. From the start, the company included an assessment of customers ancestries as part of the package. But after the FDA cracked down, it pivoted to make ancestry and finding genetic relatives its main focus. Offering the test at just $99, 23andMe went on a marketing blitz to expand its customer base competing with a new rival.

Ancestry.com launched its genome-scanning service in May 2012 and has since gone head-to-head with 23andMe through dueling TV ads and Black Friday discount deals.

DNA tests became an affordable stocking filler, as millions of customers were sold a journey of self-discovery and human connection. We were introduced to new genetic relatives. And we were told that the results might make us want to trade in our lederhosen for a kilt or connect us to distant African ancestors.

Today, Ancestrys database contains some 15 million DNA profiles; 23andMes more than 10 million. Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage, the two other main players, have about 3.5 million DNA profiles between them. And for the most dedicated family history enthusiasts, there is GEDmatch, where customers can upload DNA profiles from any of the main testing companies and look for potential relatives. It contains about 1.2 million DNA profiles.

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So far, so much fun. But DNA testing can reveal uncomfortable truths, too. Families have been torn apart by the discovery that the man they call Dad is not the biological father of his children. Home DNA tests can also be used to show that a relative is a rapist or a killer.

That possibility burst into the public consciousness in April 2018, with the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, alleged to be the Golden State Killer responsible for at least 13 killings and more than 50 rapes in the 1970s and 1980s. DeAngelo was finally tracked down after DNA left at the scene of a 1980 double murder was matched to people in GEDmatch who were the killer's third or fourth cousins. Through months of painstaking work, investigators working with the genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter built family trees that converged on DeAngelo.

Genealogists had long realized that databases like GEDmatch could be used in this way, but had been wary of working with law enforcement fearing that DNA test customers would object to the idea of cops searching their DNA profiles and rummaging around in their family trees.

But the Golden State Killers crimes were so heinous that the anticipated backlash initially failed to materialize. Indeed, a May 2018 survey of more than 1,500 US adults found that 80% backed police using public genealogy databases to solve violent crimes.

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I was very surprised with the Golden State Killer case how positive the reaction was across the board, CeCe Moore, a genealogist known for her appearances on TV, told BuzzFeed News a couple of months after DeAngelos arrest.

The new science of forensic genetic genealogy quickly became a burgeoning business, as a company in Virginia called Parabon NanoLabs, which already had access to more than 100 crime scene samples through its efforts to produce facial reconstructions from DNA, teamed up with Moore to work cold cases through genealogy.

Before long, Parabon and Moore were identifying suspected killers and rapists at the rate of about one a week. Intrigued, my editor and I decided to see how easy it would be to identify 10 BuzzFeed employees from their DNA profiles, mimicking Parabons methods. In the end, I found four through matches to their relatives DNA profiles and another two thanks to their distinctive ancestry. It was clear that genetic genealogy was already a powerful investigative tool and would only get more so as DNA databases continued to grow.

A backlash did come, however, after two developments revealed by BuzzFeed News in 2019. In January, Family Tree DNA disclosed that it had allowed the FBI to search its database for partial matches to crime-scene samples since the previous fall without telling its customers. I feel they have violated my trust, Leah Larkin, a genetic genealogist based in Livermore, California, told BuzzFeed News at the time.

Then, in May, BuzzFeed News reported that police in Centerville, Utah, had convinced Curtis Rogers, a retired Florida businessperson who cofounded GEDmatch, to breach the sites own terms and conditions, which were supposed to restrict law enforcement use to investigations of homicides or sexual assaults. That allowed Parabon to use matches in the database to identify the perpetrator of a violent assault.

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Larkin and other genealogists condemned the move, calling it the start of a slippery slope that would see the method being used to investigate more trivial crimes.

As barbs flew between genealogists working with law enforcement and those who advocate for genetic privacy, GEDmatch responded with new terms of service that extended the definition of violent crime, but also required users to explicitly opt in for their DNA profiles to be included in law enforcement searches.

Overnight, GEDmatch became useless for criminal investigations. Since then, the number of users opting in for matching to crime-scene samples has slowly increased, and now stands at more than 200,000. But progress in cracking criminal cases has remained slow.

Now that cops have seen the power of forensic genetic genealogy, however, they dont want to let it go. In November, the New York Times revealed that a detective in Florida had obtained a warrant to search the entirety of GEDmatch, regardless of opt-ins. It seems only a matter of time before someone tries to serve a warrant to search the huge databases of 23andMe or Ancestry, which dont give cops access sparking legal battles that could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Genetic privacy, barely mentioned as millions of us signed up to connect with family across the world and dig into our ancestral roots, is suddenly front and center.

This week, Rogers and the other cofounder of GEDmatch, John Olson, removed themselves from the heat when they sold GEDmatch to Verogen, a company in San Diego that makes equipment to sequence crime-scene DNA. Verogen CEO Brett Williams told BuzzFeed News that he sees a business opportunity in charging police for access to the database but promised to respect users privacy. Were not going to force people to opt in, he said.

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But it isnt just whether cops can run searches against your DNA. 23andMe may not share your information with law enforcement, but customers are asked when they signed up whether if they are OK with their de-identified DNA being used for genetic research.

It might not be obvious when you fill in the consent form, but this lies at the heart of 23andMes business model. The reason the company pushed so hard to expand its database of DNA profiles is to use this data in research to develop new drugs, either by itself or by striking deals with pharmaceutical companies.

Ancestry has also asked its users to consent to participate in research, teaming up with partners that have included Calico, a Google spinoff researching ways to extend human lifespan.

You might be comfortable with all of this. You might not. You should definitely think about it because when the information is your own DNA, there really is no such thing as de-identified data.

That DNA profile is inextricably tied to your identity. It might be stripped of your name and decoupled from the credit card you used to pay for the test. But as 23andMe warns in its privacy policy: In the event of a data breach it is possible that your data could be associated with your identity, which could be used against your interests.

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And because you share a large part of your genome with close relatives, when you put your DNA profile into a companys database, you arent only making a decision for yourself: Their privacy is on the line, too.

Whether its due to concerns about privacy, a saturated market, or just that the novelty has worn off, sales of DNA ancestry tests are slowing. Ancestry has responded by offering a new product focused on health risks. Unlike 23andMe, it requires that tests are ordered through PWNHealth, a national network of doctors and genetic counselors.

Will this be the development that takes us back to the future I once imagined? Maybe so, but if the roller coaster of the past decade has taught me anything, its to be wary about making any predictions about our genetic future.

Peter Aldhous is a Science Reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Contact Peter Aldhous at peter.aldhous@buzzfeed.com.

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Were Living In The DNA Future, But Its Not The One We Were Promised - BuzzFeed News

Pumping iron: A gene called BOLA2 helps proteins capture iron, which is crucial for red blood cells to transport oxygen.

Design Cells / Science Photo Library

IN BRIEF

Extra copies of a gene called BOLA2 predispose people to autism and may protect against iron deficiency, according to a new study1.

Repeats of the gene make people susceptible to deletion or duplication of a region on chromosome 16 that is tied to autism. The benefit of anemia prevention may explain why the repeats evolved despite their potential harm.

The rearrangement is highly compensated by an adaptation, says co-lead researcher Alexandre Reymond, director of the Center for Integrative Genomics at the Universit de Lausanne in Switzerland.

The extra copies are unique to humans, who typically have six. Our closest ancestors Neanderthals, Denisovans and chimpanzees each have only two, suggesting that the repeats confer an important evolutionary advantage. What that advantage is, however, has been a mystery.

One clue lies in the genes function: BOLA2 helps proteins capture iron. Having fewer repeats is associated with anemia, the researchers found.

Its very interesting, says Emily Casanova, research assistant professor of biomedical sciences at the University of South Carolina in Greenville, who was not involved in the study. My only question is why BOLA2 duplications would have been selected for. What might have been some of the driving factors?

BOLA2 repeats flank a stretch of chromosome 16 called 16p11.2, a hotspot for deletions and duplications that can lead to autism. As eggs and sperm form, the BOLA2 repeats cause DNA to break and rejoin in unusual ways in the 16p11.2 region.

Reymond and his colleagues counted BOLA2 repeats in 130 people who have a deletion of 16p11.2 and in the genetic sequences of 635 controls from two data repositories.

They found that 16p11.2 deletion carriers tend to have fewer BOLA2 repeats than controls do: four as opposed to the usual six. The findings suggest that some BOLA2 copies are lost when deletions in 16p11.2 form.

Because BOLA2 helps proteins latch onto iron, the researchers wondered whether too little of it has consequences for red blood cells; iron is crucial for the cells to transport oxygen.

The researchers analyzed blood samples and medical information from 83 deletion carriers. They found that 8 of the 15 people with only three BOLA2 repeats have signs of anemia, compared with 5 of 68 who have four or more repeats.

The researchers found a similar pattern when they examined genetic and medical information for 379,474 people in the UK Biobank. They found anemia in 20 percent of people with a 16p11.2 deletion, compared with 5 percent of controls. (Anemias prevalence in people with a duplication is no different than in controls.)

Mice missing a copy of 16p11.2 also have low iron levels, and their red blood cells show signs of mild anemia, the team found. Two strains of mice that lack one or both of their copies of BOLA2 show similar traits. The findings were published 7 November in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The results jibe with those from a March study, in which researchers found an increased risk of anemia in people with a 16p11.2 deletion2.

The link of the BOLA2 copy number to anemia is quite strong, says Bernard Crespi, professor of evolutionary biology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved in the study. Why humans evolved a higher number of BOLA2 genes, thats the hard question.

The factors that selected for extra BOLA2 copies remain a mystery. Having extra BOLA2 might have been beneficial as early humans shifted away from a diet based on red meat to one that is less rich in iron, Reymond says. Or perhaps the repeats arose because they protect people from infections, he says: Many pathogens depend on iron they scavenge from their hosts, and BOLA2 might interfere with that process.

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Gene repeats tied to autism may prevent anemia - Spectrum

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The genetics behind the bitter taste of some sorghum plants and one of Africas most reviled bird species illustrates how human genetics, crops, and the environment influence one another in the process of plant domestication, according to new research.

The study untangles these factors to create a more complete look at crop domestication than is possible in other major crops, says Xianran Li, an adjunct associate professor in the agronomy department at Iowa State University and corresponding author of the paper in Nature Plants.

The study looks at how human genetics, and the presence of bird species with a taste for sorghum seeds might have influenced the traits farmers in Africa selected in their crops over thousands of years.

The unique geographic distribution in Africa of sorghum plants that contain condensed tannins, or biomolecules that often induce a bitter taste, provided one side of a domestication triangle that helped the researchers piece together the domestication puzzle, Li says.

Its a systematic view that gives us a full picture of domestication, he says. Looking at just one component only tells us part of the story.

Sorghum is a cereal crop first domesticated in Africa that remains a staple food throughout the continent. The researchers note that sorghum varieties with high levels of tannins commonly grow in eastern and southern Africa, while western African farmers tend to prefer varieties with low tannin content. In contrast, domestication processes in other continents removed condensed tannins from most other cereal crops, such as wheat, rice, and corn, due to the bitter taste they produce.

But farmers in south and east Africa grow many cultivars that retained tannin, which would seem to be a puzzling decision considering the taste and unfavorable nutritional values. Li says the condensed tannins were likely retained as a defense mechanism from the red-billed quelea, a bird species sometimes referred to as a feathered locust that can cause up to $50 million in economic losses in Africa every year from eating crops. Li and his coauthors found the distribution of sorghum cultivars with tannin correspond to areas with red-billed quelea populations.

They also consulted publicly accessible genotype information on human populations in Africa and found an associated distribution of the taste receptor TAS2R among Africans in regions that commonly grow sorghum with tannin. Taste receptors are molecules that facilitate the sensation of certain tastes, and the patterns in the distribution of TAS2R could make people living in those regions of Africa less susceptible to the bitter taste tannin causes.

Li calls this interaction among sorghum tannin, human taste receptors, and herbivorous birds a unique triangle that offers insight into crop domestication. And, because condensed tannins were bred out of other cereal crops, this kind of research is possible only with sorghum, he says.

Our investigation uncovered coevolution among humans, plants, and environments linked by condensed tannins, the first example of domestication triangle, Li says. The concept of a domestication triangle has been proposed previously and generally accepted. Discovering a concrete case, particularly with some molecular evidence, is very exciting. We think this study could help uncover future cases.

To arrive at their conclusions, the research team grew sorghum varieties with and without tannin and analyzed publicly available datasets on human genetics and wild bird populations in Africa to untangle how these factors interact with one another to influence the domestication of sorghum in Africa.

The experiments involving sorghum grown in Iowa found sparrows would feed on the seeds of plants without tannin but left alone the cultivars that contained tannin, reinforcing the concept that herbivore threats to sorghum crops prefer non-tannin varieties.

The whole discovery was driven by curiosity, after we observed the unexpected sparrow damage in our sorghum field, says Jianming Yu, professor of agronomy and chair in maize breeding. We really had no clue that our gene cloning project to find the pair of interacting genes underlying sorghum tannins would lead to this discovery.

Funding for the research came from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Iowa States Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding, and the universitys Plant Sciences Institute.

Source: Iowa State University

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Pesky birds, bitter crops, and taste show evolution 'triangle' - Futurity: Research News