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Comment by cncrnd | Hacker News Reader

Are the results of WGS + analysis with promethease more insightful than the results of 23andMe?

23andme measures presence / absence of ~1M specific single-nucleotide polymorphism mutations (a SNP is a change in one "letter" of DNA), out of 10M+ total mutations known SNP mutations. Whole genome sequencing reads basically your entire genome, which consists of approximately 3 billion base pairs

so 23andme is like a unit test, and WGS is like the source code for the whole system

that said, we don't really know how to interpret most of the source code, so for a lot of cases (esp those that don't relate to medical treatment or research), 23andme is probably fine

Not for me. You obviously have more data, but like 23andme,I found very little of it to be actionable or useful. YMMV

What'd you use to analyze your genome, promethease?

I think that increased risks of x,y,z would be good to be aware of.

Yes, promethease. Have you done 23andme? It also gives you increased risks, but usually none that are helpful. For example, if it says that you have some Snaps that increase your risks of prostate cancer from 1 in 100 to 2in 100, what do you do with that? 2 in 100 is still so low (even though double baseline population risk), that it's not going to effect my decisions. That's also assuming it's accurate -- other SNPs may lower your risk.

I haven't done it because of privacy concerns, but I am considering WGS through a lab then promethease instead.

I don't think understanding risk would affect my decisions much either, but I'd probably get familiar with the symptoms of things I have a higher chance of to be able to recognize issues earlier. If there are screenings available, maybe I'd start doing them a little earlier or more frequently than prescribed.

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