ED’s note: Health Labs is no longer a feature within 23andMe’s current product.
In 2009, we added six tools to 23andMe Labs, our technology sandbox, where we showcase experimental features. In case you haven’t played around with them yet, here’s a brief review:
Health Labs
Reynolds Risk Score
This tool calculates a 10-year risk for heart-attack using information including cholesterol and blood pressure.
ABO Blood Type
There actually are more than 25 different blood groups that go into determining your particular “type,” but you’re probably most familiar with the blood group defined by the ABO gene. This gene determines whether you will be type O, A, B, or AB.
Genetic Weight Calculator
See how much of your weight you can blame on your genes (not your jeans)!
Ancestry Labs
Haplogroup Tree Mutation MapperThis feature shows you which particular mutations in a person’s mitochondrial DNA (maternal ancestry) or Y chromosome (paternal ancestry) were used to determine their haplogroup assignment.
Family Inheritance: Advanced
Bit by bit, compare your DNA to see what segments you share with close and distant family.
Native American Ancestry Finder
Search for evidence of Native American ancestry in a person’s genome.
Customers who have purchased the Complete Edition of our service have access to both Health and Ancestry Labs. Customers with either the Health or Ancestry Editions of 23andMe have access only to the Labs relevant to their received data.
The point of Labs is to let you, our customers, play around with cutting-edge tools while our scientists are still developing them. What can we say? We’re super excited about genetics, and we love to share! Each Lab has its own community, so you can compare notes, ask questions, and share ideas. We love to hear your ideas and comments!
But please remember that labs are a free feature and are not part of our regular service. Some labs require specialized knowledge or may be of interest only to a subset of our customers. Because they’re still in development, you can expect labs to be a little less refined than our regular product and somewhat fluid. All of them are still in beta. A feature could be discontinued at any time or elevated to full integration with our Personal Genome Service.
