June 13, 2013
Sixty years after Crick and Watson showed us the double helix structure of DNA, the Smithsonian opens the exhibition “Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code,” showing us all how the genetic revolution continues to change our lives, our health and our understanding of the human story. The exhibition — just [...]
April 24, 2013
This month marks the tenth anniversary of one of the greatest scientific achievements of our time when in 2003 researchers decoded the last of the three billion letters that make up the human genome. Dr. Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Project, spoke with reporters a week ago saying that [...]
March 13, 2013
You may not have thought about your genome lately, but one day you will and so will your doctor. In an opinion piece published in the Guardian, Anne Wojcicki, our CEO and co-founder, offered some thoughts about why knowing your own genetic information will become increasingly important for your [...]
September 6, 2012
We’re a little late to the party, but yesterday a consortium of scientists, who are part of a project called The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, or ENCODE, came out with what some are calling a roadmap of the human genome. It’s a big party. More than 400 scientists worked on the project, which was [...]
September 24, 2008
What is it about humans that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Is it our upright walking? Our language? Our love of Reality TV? Even though we are said to be 99% genetically identical to our closest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee, we clearly differ vastly from them [...]
April 29, 2008
This woman shares 99.5% of her DNA with Lilly Mendel. Team 23andMe likes games – Wii tennis and Segway polo are big here. So are friendly wagers over a new employee's ACTN3 genotype, or whether a given Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation will converge during our lifetimes. So in the spirit of friendly [...]
February 11, 2008
There were fireworks on the beach at Marco Island, Fla., Thursday night, where 575 genome experts had gathered to discuss serious progress in genomics at the annual Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference. I last saw fireworks at a genomics conference in 2000. Back then, euphoria around the [...]
February 10, 2008
SNPwatch gives you the latest news about research linking various traits and conditions to individual genetic variations. These studies are exciting because they offer a glimpse into how genetics may affect our bodies and health; but in most cases, more work is needed before this research can provide [...]
January 29, 2008
An editorial in the February issue of Nature Genetics makes a number of excellent points about the potential that personal genomics services such as 23andMe have to directly engage the public in research, not just as subjects but as collaborators. 23andMe was founded in part to harness the natural [...]
