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The One Thousand Genes You Could Live Without
sciencehabit writes Today researchers unveiled the largest ever set of full genomes from a single population: Iceland. The massive project, carried out by a private company in the country, deCODE genetics, has yielded new disease risk genes, insights into human evolution, and a list of more than 1000 genes that people can apparently live without. The project also serves as a model for other countries' efforts to sequence their people's DNA for research on personalized medical care, says study leader Kári Stefánsson, deCODE's CEO. For example, the United States is planning to sequence the genomes of 1 million Americans over the next few years and use the data to devise individualized treatments.
People believing they are smarter than billions of years of evolution gives me no assurance that these people have a clue, let alone care about modifying people.
Putting evolution on a pedestal isn't much smarter. It's not some godlike entity which designed humans with a goal in mind, it's a very long, very sinuous process which often gives locally optimal but globally suboptimal results. There is no reason to think that humans, for some reason, can't do better.
Last time I checked (about 6 months ago), MacroGen up in Korea will do a whole genome (30X coverage) for $1,500 - but the minimum order is 50 genomes. If you only want one genome sequenced then the cost is $4,500.
It's worth noting also that you don't need blood, per se. DNAGenotek sells saliva collection kits ($20/kit but 25 kit minimum order). Basically you just spit in a tube, FedEx it to Korea and a few months later they're send you a USB external hard drive with a few hundred GB of your genome sequence data.
And this is all for Illumina short reads (e.g. 200 base pairs) - so you won't get good mapping to much of the reference genome - e.g. if you're looking for a microdeletion in a repetitive region you may be out of luck. PacBio technology offers longer reads (e.g. 10,000 base pairs) but then even just 1X coverage whole genome sequencing will cost you about $8,000.
3 billion base pairs.
Each base pair is 2 bits (AGC or T). A byte is 8 bits or 4 base pairs. so
3E9 / 4 = 750 MegaBytes.
A CD holds up to 900MB of data. No need to even compress the data, and it would be highly(!) compressible
Q.E.D.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.