November 5, 2012
(Editor's note: Here is a link to Cory's poster presented at ASHG.) Parkinson’s disease (PD) research has long been a priority at 23andMe. Our Parkinson’s research community is one of the largest in the world with over 9,300 patients. Our research on the disease has been published in peer-reviewed [...]
November 2, 2012
(Editor's note: Here is a link to Eoghan's poster presented at ASHG.) People often use the terms “genotyping” and “sequencing” interchangeably, but they are quite different ways of approaching genetic data. One large difference is the amount of data generated. Genotyping, what 23andMe does, [...]
November 1, 2012
(Editor's note: Here is a link to Brian's poster presented at ASHG.) Rare events are hard to study, and this is especially true in genetics. Imagine you have a group of four people carrying a mutation and two of them are also afflicted with same medical condition. Coincidence or correlation? Well, this [...]
October 26, 2012
What would you do if you found out that you had a rare and possibly life-threatening genetic mutation? You’d probably talk to relatives about your family medical history. You’d likely visit your doctor and maybe a specialist. You might even change your diet and exercise routines. Arnab Chowdry did all [...]
September 20, 2012
by Emily Chang, Joanna Mountain and Mike Macpherson Click on the image above for a larger version of this chart, which shows that some ancestry combinations are more common than others in the 23andMe database. Given the “melting pot” nature of the United States, it is not surprising that most [...]
September 5, 2012
Correction: Ouch! We mistakenly listed the wrong answer to the last question in the quiz. It has been corrected. Populations are more similar now than they were 500 years ago due to migration and intermixing. The correction did not change the results for the winner. Okay students, pencils down! Last [...]
August 31, 2012
Soon children will be filling their backpacks with new notebooks and pencils and piling into yellow school buses. Even if your school days are long past, you need not be left behind. Learning is life-long, and you can continue your education using 23andMe's short animated guides to human prehistory. [...]
August 29, 2012
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) include everything from the relatively mild Asperger syndrome (characterized by more mild social and language impairments) to full-fledged autism (characterized by severe social and communicative handicaps, limited interests, and repetitive behaviors). ASD is relatively [...]
August 15, 2012
You may not think very much about yaks, but Tibetans do. The domestic yak is crucial for their survival on the harsh Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. The yak provides meat, milk and, to the distate of many Western travelers, salty yak-butter tea. Like the people who domesticated it, the yak is tough, thriving at [...]
August 9, 2012
Watching the Olympics, I am awed by the athleticism of the contestants: they compete with strength, skill and coordination that I could hardly dream of possessing. Certainly hard work and determination has played a role in each athlete’s story, but probably good genes have also contributed to their [...]
