Talk

Yes, that’s the sound of champagne corks flying at DNA Direct. We’re happy to announce our next round of funding. Our newest investor, Lemhi Ventures, is focused on growing businesses that target disruptive changes in health care, to improve quality and value for consumers.

How does DNA Direct provide solutions to disruptive change? Personalized medicine, coming to you online, over the phone, at home, in your doctor’s office, and through your labs. We’re focused on making the connections between patients, physicians and institutions — closing the loop, so to speak, or addressing the gap — so that the potential of medical genetics to affect people’s healthcare and change people’s lives is realized.

Here’s the official press release: (more…)

Ethical Issues Surrounding Personal Health Records: Google Health and the Cleveland Clinic’s announced a partnership this week and everyone’s buzzing about privacy, portability, and all things Google. “HIPAA” has officially entered the public vernacular. David Hamilton outlines privacy and other ethical issues at Venture Beat. Steve Lohr adds more at his NYTimes blog, Bits. Betsy Schiffman at Wired’s blog is a bit more blase.

Paternity Testing: A simple test, a sensational tabloid topic, and sometimes a sticky wicket of ethical issues, too. Identigene is now offering a drugstore paternity test, which they claim may be used for legal purposes. But legally admissable test results require chain-of-custody documentation. I wonder how a drugstore kit will swing that? Many of us here at DNA Direct take issue with Identigene’s support (encouragement?) of gathering DNA samples without the tester’s knowledge and consent. On a different note, the Wall Street Journal mentions that 1 in 25 births is a non-paternal event. I’ve heard tell in some medical circles that the rate of non-paternal events is estimated to be as high as 1 in 10 births.

And speaking of paternity testing. And twins… Hsien Lei trumped my posts on twins (as always) with her discussion about a paternity suit involving identical twin brothers. She explains more about how there can be genetic differences between identical twins, who hatch from the same fertilized egg.

Right on the tails of my last post comes ground-breaking news about identical twins: they don’t actually have identical genetics! (Darn close, but not 100% identical.)

A study by University of Alabama, Birmingham researchers challenges the long-held belief that identical twins have identical genetics. They compared the DNA of sets of twins and discovered significant copy number variation (or CNV).

…[S]ubstantial chunks of DNA sequences were missing, doubled or reversed in one of the two twins. Having chunks of DNA sequences shifted around or missing is a common genetic mutation. When first discovered, scientists thought it was inconsequential. Often it is, but researchers are beginning to learn that sometimes CNV can be a major factor in developing a disease. (more…)