Common people
I propose establishing a Genome Commons, a public knowledgebase of human genetic variation and its effect, culled from databases, diagnostic laboratories, and the scientific literature. Ultimately, such a repository of our common human inheritance would be a vast resource for research, medicine and understanding ourselves.
I visited a lab several months ago and was given a tour of the sequencing operation. At the end I asked, “Then what happens? Is there some off-the-shelf tool to collate and interpret human genomic data?” There was some shuffling of feet and some mumbling about 23andMe. The short answer was “No.”
Well, leave it to a microbial biologist. Steven Brenner puts forth a potential solution that is obvious, easy to understand and would fill a rapidly growing need. And involving the private sector without ceding control to any one company or the government seems like a promising approach. It’s clear we have a long way to go, especially with respect to phenotypic information. But if it’s done right this could be the Library of Congress for human genomic variation.
I work as an Assistant Professor in the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (although this site and its content are my own).
In 2007 I became the fourth subject in Harvard geneticist George Church's Personal Genome Project. As the PGP moves forward, I am chronicling the dawn of personal genomics, that is, people obtaining their genomic information for whatever reason(s) and figuring out what to do with it. I am interested in the relevant technologies and especially the attendant privacy and other ethical/legal/social issues.
This blog may also discuss some of my non-genome interests or, to paraphrase Dwight Yoakam, "Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music, etc etc."
The header image comes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's multimedia performance piece, "Ferocious Beauty: Genome."
October 18th, 2007 at 1:25 am
I’m not surprised Steve came up with the idea, and I’ve toyed with describing a similar concept on my blog.
It’s an interesting challenge, and I’m sure there will be many who would take up the task. It would be particularly interesting if a lot of the central pieces could be standardized so that it would be easy to have your DNA analyzed by many different vendors & the results compared — perhaps instead of trusting one vendor you might get a consensus.
Done well, such a framework would (IMHO) greatly stimulate both industry and academia, as we might actually (dare we dream?) have lots of tools which can talk to one another, rather than a horrendous thicket of incompatible formats, most of which differ in trivial but burdensome ways.
Science Commons would also seem a natural organization to participate in such an effort.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:36 am
I couldn’t agree more, Keith. Why not an X Prize for the Jim Kent of the genomic data repository? The multiple vendor idea is intriguing, too. It reminds me of lendingtree.com’s tagline: “When banks compete, you win.”