• 29 October 2009 by Peter Aldhous
• Magazine issue 2732. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
• For similar stories, visit the Genetics Topic Guide

CAN personal genomics lead to major scientific discoveries? Using online questionnaires filled in by its customers, genome-scanning firm 23andMe has identified new genetic variants associated with curly hair, the inability to smell asparagus in one's own urine and the bizarre reflex that causes some to sneeze in bright light.

Whether such companies can aid the more serious hunt for genes that help determine our susceptibility to diseases like cancer is still up for grabs.

Although 23andMe, based in Mountain View, California, was launched as a vehicle for curious people to peek at their own DNA, the firm also aims to engage its customers in genetics research.

23andMe's initial results, reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in Honolulu, Hawaii, may seem trivial. But they have impressed some geneticists. "They've demonstrated that they can do genome-wide association studies, and do them well," says Daniel MacArthur of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, UK, who runs the Genetic Future blog.

MacArthur doubts whether 23andMe can compete with the academic consortia that are blazing the trail in the hunt for disease-susceptibility genes, though. These consortia may be able to obtain more detailed and reliable information than that from online questionnaires.

One of 23andMe's results underlines the potential difficulties of relying on these: some respondents seemed to base whether they described themselves as more of a "sprint" or "endurance" athlete on whether they had been shown to have a gene known to influence the trait. 23andMe says this was the only example of such bias it has so far encountered. For diseases with ambiguous diagnoses, similar bias could prove a problem.

To contribute to serious disease research, 23andMe will also have to recruit more volunteers. In July, the company launched its Research Revolution project, in which people are offered cut-rate genome scans if they volunteer for research studies. However, the most popular category, migraines, has so far attracted only 214 volunteers - far from the 1000 needed for a study.

Meanwhile, rival firm TruGenetics has failed to raise investment for its plan to offer free genome scans to research volunteers. "Investors are just not clear on where the profit is going to come from," says founder Jason Chien, a genetic epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Don't count 23andMe out just yet. "The research component is a very meaningful part of our business model," says the firm.

"I don't think 23andMe is going to have a problem recruiting enough people when they get serious about it," says Ray White, director of the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center in Emeryville, California.

At a recent talk, eminent scientist Stephen Hawking said that humans are entering, “a new phase, of what might be called self designed evolution, in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA.” Showing impatience with biological evolution, he said, “There is no time to wait for Darwinian evolution to make us more intelligent, and better natured.” Dr. Hawking previously expressed transhumanist views in his book The Universe in a Nutshell (2001).

In his talk, Hawking contrasted the speed of evolutionary and memetic progress, saying, “There has been no detectable change in human DNA, brought about by biological evolution, in the 10,000 years of recorded history. But the amount of knowledge handed on from generation to generation has grown enormously.” Considering that it has taken us “several million years to evolve from the apes,” and that “the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits,” Hawking estimates that the rate of change of biological evolution in humanity has been only about a bit per year. But the amount of knowledge passed down through written language exceeds this by many orders of magnitude. Hawking said, “The rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA.”

At the end of his talk, Hawking said that DNA-based organisms will eventually evolve into machines, which could “eventually replace DNA-based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life.”