The Genetic Genealogist

In order to clean out posts I’ve been saving in Google Reader (does anyone else keep posts in Reader until you’ve blogged about them?), I decided to have a potpourri day. The following are links to interesting articles around the blogosphere. And Happy Halloween!

Pedro at Public Rambling has The Fortune Cookie Genome, a ‘science fiction’ post about picking up the results of his whole genome scan from his genetic advisor. Of course, it’s only science ‘fiction’ until it’s science ‘reality’!

The Women’s Bioethic Project has an article about DNA Testing Without Consent, which asks whether there should be a ‘reverse’ statute of limitations for testing DNA from famous dead people. The article was written in response to a recent story in Parade. I talked about this briefly back in August (see “DNA From the Dead“), and I’m working on a post about “Discarded DNA and the Constitution”, so stick around. HT: Eye on DNA.

Tim at Genealogy Reviews Online continues his review of DNA Ancestry with DNA Ancestry Review Part 2. In this installment, Tim describes the DNA collection process.

At The Tree of Life, Jonathan Eisen presents the Overselling Genomics award to Newsweek as a result of their “10 Hottest Nerds” story. Personally, I think any story that brings science to the masses in an connectable way is beneficial, but I agree that the lack of women on the list was a huge oversight.

At genomeboy.com, Misha Angrist dissects the recent Portfolio piece about personal genomics companies such as 23andMe and Navigenics. He also highlights that familiar $12.5 billion “potential market” quote. I wish I knew who and how that number has come from.

And finally, Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log writes about The Secrets in Your Genome, which is about the International HapMap Consortium’s latest release:

“Today’s map of genetic variations, also known as a haplotype map (hence the word HapMap), follows up on the international consortium’s first map, issued in 2005. The first map analyzed about 1 million variants in the human genome. This second map charts more than 3.1 million of the variants – also known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs”