Personal Genome Project

Last week I linked to Genomes Unzipped participant Joe Pickrell ("Ancestry unzipped"), who was working through the ancestry calculations that made his genome appear to have been partially Ashkenazi Jewish in origin ("Am I partly Jewish?").

Now, Pickrell updates the story ("Am I partly Jewish? An unexpected turn of events"):

As I was mulling over these sorts of issues, I sent the link to my previous analysis to a family member. I didn’t really expect this person to find it that interesting, but hey, you never know. I then got a phone call. I’ll summarize a couple days worth of moderate confusion, second-hand reports of conversations with distant relatives, and family intrigue with this: as it turns out, one of my great-grandparents was indeed a Polish Ashkenazi Jew who immigrated to the United States around the turn of the century. I, obviously, was completely unaware of this.

Before coming to this deeper genealogical discovery, Pickrell summarizes some additional comparisons that made it difficult to explain the genetic results by errors in assumptions of the methods. This is the kind of outcome many people are hoping they will get from their genetic information -- a prompt for distant relatives to uncover family histories that, in many cases, they didn't know would be interesting. Or that in the past some wanted to forget.

Razib ponders the question "Do ancestors matter?" Obviously they matter deeply to some, to others not so much. Unexpected discoveries from genetic information are not new, they're at least as old as blood typing. There is already a large community of people who find meaning from genealogical research and comparisons with others -- research that ultimately can illuminate only a very small part of any individual's genealogical history. Genetics doesn't necessarily offer any more than this. Any one person's genes come from only a small fraction of her ancestors.

But the DNA may inform about a different part of one's genealogy than oral and written history. And it may give rise to a deeper idea of ancestry than cultural reckoning -- which in a mere fifty years can drive people to forget some of their ancestors and promote fictive ones.

Katrina Voss wrote in New Scientist a couple of weeks ago: "Your genome isn't that precious -- give it away". After discussing legislative efforts to provide remedies for genetic data security breaches, she writes:

Yet much of our concern about the abuse of personal genetic data seems overblown. It betrays a fundamental delusion of self-importance: we assume that someone will find our individual genome interesting enough to hack into it and exploit it. In most cases, this would be a waste of time: our genetic secrets are rarely worth the cost of obtaining them clandestinely.

The article touches on the Personal Genome Project's aim to release data unconditionally. In that context, complete openness can be cast as a selfless sacrifice:

The PGP's open approach is pragmatic: society has much to gain from unrestricted access to genome sequences, medical histories and phenotypic data. For example, only by knowing how traits, experience and genes interact can we discover how both environmental factors and DNA affect disease. The prospect of such progress was a major factor in my family's decision to get involved. Whatever our fears about privacy, we have chosen to cast them aside for the greater cause. But no one who chooses to have their DNA tested should expect perfect anonymity - especially since DNA is the ultimate identifier.

Hmmm....the ultimate identifier.

I don't have anything against people choosing to make their data totally open -- I could imagine choosing to do so myself. I do think we should consider the rights of siblings, children, and parents, who after all share half each others' genomes.

But I read another article that I think makes an interesting juxtaposition: "How much are you worth on the black market?"

Ever wondered how much your online identity is worth to a cybercriminal? A new tool from Symantec Corp. will perform the calculation for you.

The Norton Online Risk Calculator, unveiled within a microsite to coincide with the launch of Norton 2010, calculates your net worth on the black market by asking a few questions about your personal Internet use.

It's a catchy intro for a story about data security -- later the miserable facts:

Mistakes Internet users continue to make include forgetting to renew their security software subscriptions, not keeping operating system patches up to date and failing to use the latest version of their Internet browser, Merritt pointed out.

Sure, a genome today is worth less than a credit card number on the black market. But suppose you knew somebody's DNA fingerprint, mtDNA sequence or other data used routinely in forensics. It would be trivial to synthesize fragments with the right lengths and primer sequences, use PCR to make a bunch of copies of them, and scatter them at a real crime scene.

Well, that's the paranoid scenario, anyway!

"Every four and a half minutes, a crime is committed on the streets of Los Angeles. Every three minutes, a crime is committed on the streets of Washington, D.C. In New York, a crime is committed every two minutes ... every three seconds, a crime is committed on the net," she said.

For genetics, the question hinges on whether there will ever be a practical use for the data. I mean, when we talk about "identity theft", we think there's something worse going on than thieves walking into your house and taking down the genealogy chart.

Blackmail is a use, but not very practical on a large scale. Now, if somebody could corrupt your data, say change a nucleotide or two, then they could spoof drug interaction risks and thereby damage your medical treatment courses. Still, that's not going to drive a huge underground of omecrackers.

Of more relevance: What could somebody do if they knew the average genetic makeup of an organization, say by cracking a representative sample?