The Genetic Genealogist

As of the end of November, the Personal Genome Project has a newly-designed and user-friendly website. Compare the OLD site and the NEW site - what an improvement! Misha Angrist, aka genomeboy.com and one of the “First 10″ aptly called the site “PGP 2.0″.

The new site is extremely well organized and contains information about the project and about participating in the project, if one is so inclined. Since this project will contain so much personal information about each individual that joins, participants will go through an extensive consent process that will include education, physician assistance, and even an online assessment to gauge the participant’s grasp of genetics and the risks of participation, among other things. I know that the team is working feverishly behind the scenes to gather as much information as possible to create an extensive consent protocol.

PGP 2.0 contains the official biographies of the “First 10″, which they call the PGP-10. I assembled biographies of the First 10 back in July when their names were released, and upon quick comparison it looks like I did a good job. The new site also contains a picture of 8 of the “First 10″ (note that the picture is missing Stan Lapidus as well as the mysterious 10th individual who has not yet been identified).

On a related note, the Personal Genome X-Team (PGx), which is led by George Church (leader of the PGP) has just become the sixth contender for the Archon X-Prize for Genomics (see my discussion of this X-Prize here).

So what does all this mean? For genetic genealogists, the PGP and the Archon X-Prize for Genomics means that affordable whole-genome sequencing is getting closer and closer every day (my prediction - which is based solely on my own educated guess - is that I will be able to sequence my entire genome for $1,000 or less by the end of 2009). As of 2007, genetic genealogists have done amazing things with just a few 100 or few 1000 sequenced bases. When we have access to the data from thousands of entire genomes, the field of genetic genealogy will explode.