Is genetic privacy overrated?

Why keep secrets? The 12 bloggers at Genomes Unzipped (an interesting genetics blog I didn’t know about till just now) are releasing their genetic data, mainly 23andme results, to the world. Daniel MacArthur writes that the need to keep genetic data private makes valuable data-sharing difficult, so he and his friends are making a gift to science: The raw data is here. They also plan to release any software they create.

I liked his point that genetic privacy is overrated anyway, when you shed hair and skin everywhere you go.

A similar, more ambitious effort is the Personal Genome Project, which aims to build a repository of 100,000 individuals who have decided to share their data. (They’re up to 10 so far. [Update: now it’s 1,000]) That project’s privacy statement includes the reverse idea: that if someone has your genetic data, it’s not so hard for them to know who you are.

We question the long-held belief that research endeavors involving human genome sequencing can guarantee, in perpetuity, the confidentiality or anonymity of the information revealed from a personal genome sequence. For example, it is becoming easier to glean personally indentifiable knowledge from DNA sequences, including hair and eye color, height, and facial features. Protecting the identity of indviduals is particularly difficult while the number of personal genome sequences existing in the world is small.

Anyhow, I’m reading this as I sit at home watching the twitter feed (#bgt2010) for Beyond the Genome, a conference in Boston about “the true gene count, human evolution, and disease genomics.” Sounds like fun!

Linux kernel genomics, babyology, and the secret to lifting more weight without getting any stronger

1

A comparison of the Linux kernel’s system calls with the transcriptional network of E. coli shows two very different organizational structures. “Linux is middle-management heavy, whereas E. coli is workhorse heavy. … The authors conclude that the E. coli’s call graph evolved bottom-up, with system robustness being the main selective trait. In contrast, Linux evolved top-bottom, with reusability of the Workhorses being the main selective trait. Reusability and robustness are tradeoffs,” writes Iddo Friedberg.
[Byte Size Biology: Comparative functional genomics: penguin vs. bacterium]

2

“We do not know much about sleep in babies but it does not look like sleep in adults,” says one sleep researcher, about a recent study in which babies showed the ability to learn while asleep. Comatose adults can learn the same association (between a beep and a puff of air to the face) but the experiment doesn’t work on healthy adults, since they wake up. [New Scientist: Sleeping newborns are data sponges]

3

When you’re at the gym, cool your hands between sets and you might be able to lift more. The hypothesis is that the cooling makes you think you’re less fatigued. However it works, that’s just weird.  [Sweat Science: Cooling your palms enables you to bench press more weight]

4

Fetal cells stay in their mother’s body for years - maybe forever. Nancy Schute at SciAm writes that “Fetal cells also appear to migrate to injury sites and have been found in patients with thyroid and liver damage, where they had morphed into organ cells … A mother’s body might actually be recruiting the fetal stem cells to aid in healing.” Wow! [Scientific American: Beyond Birth]