As others have said, the real issue is how they get all the way down to $200. Sale of personal info?
Maybe when we get a clear answer, I'll consider checking my genome. But not before.
Maybe when we get a clear answer, I'll consider checking my genome. But not before.
> You may withdraw your consent to participate in Dante Labs Research at any time by contacting Dante Labs at the email address: contact@dantelabs.com. Dante Labs will not include your Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information in studies that start more than 30 days after you withdraw (it may take up to 30 days to withdraw your information after you withdraw your consent). Any research involving your data that has already been performed or published prior to your withdrawal from Dante Labs Research will not be reversed, undone, or withdrawn.
I'm not quite sure what to think.
Dante Labs will not sell, lease, or rent your individual-level information to any third party or to a third party for research purposes without your explicit consent.
So they will sell your data unless you specifically look for, find, and check the opt out. What happens to your data after that is out of Dante Labs control, so any other assurances they make are irrelevant.
1 - in the event of a sale, your data may be among the assets transfered
2 - this policy is updated from time to time and comes into effect at the time of posting, and maybe we'll notify you ahead of time
My assumption, since this promo is for a few days only, is that it's like any sale; they're doing it to build their brand and attract new customers.
Could they still sell it as marketing data?
The GDPR does, actually. The data can only be transferred to a GDPR-compliant company, and the user must agree to the transfer.
[0]: http://www.completegenomics.com/ [1]: http://www.rdrmanac.com/
That’s much higher than I’ve seen reported for prior Complete/BGI datasets. Recently lower error rates have been reported, but I’m surprised to see them this low.
If this is true, it’s comparable to the error rates on Illuminas older instruments (the GA1s and 2s at least, if not Hiseqs).
Q20 is one error in 100. Q30, one error in 1000. I think Illumina average error rate (Novaseq) is >Q30 now.
Veritas Genetics were also offering a 200USD genome a while back. I think that was Illumina sequencing, but it was a very limited time offer.
Yes, that was on Monday Nov 19th. Veritas offered 1,000 genomes (Illuminca sequencing) at USD 200. They sold out in 6 hours.
* Disclaimer: I work for Veritas.
[0] https://www.genome.gov/27541954/dna-sequencing-costs-data/
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/10/illumina-wants-to-sequence...
The only way this company stays alive without significant venture funding (which it appears they don't have) is through partnering with pharmas. From reading their privacy policy, it looks like they are de-identifying genotypic and phenotypic data from users. This, at scale, creates a nice population based genetics study so that if I'm a pharma, I can look at a specific biomarker and all data associated with it. That helps me build drugs against certain genes, diseases, etc.
So yes, you are the still the product and yes, your data is being resold.
Also, in their About Us section they have every technology listed under the sun (Illumina, PacBio, Thermo, BGI) so I think it's just whatever they can get their hands on based on which labs have open runs. Seems quite questionable from a data integrity perspective if you're trying to do population based genetics. The quality between sequencers varies dramatically.
The BGI (MGI) have been pushing out new instruments, reportedly with lower error rates (and much cheaper than Illumina).
They’ve also been building out service centers outside China, and I suspect this is where the sequencing being done by this service is located.
Universities do sometimes offer sequencing as a service, but I suspect not at as low a price point as the BGI, even for those universities with attached genome centers.
We go up against universities all the time in our competitive deals. They're generally always cheaper since everything is subsidized however the turnaround times are usually significant and the quality is not entirely repeatable. The cost here looks heavily subsidized just as a way to spark interest.
At one point, we thought that simply replacing a user's IP with a unique ID was enough to anonymise.
At one point, a blur or pixelating filter on a photo was sufficient to anonymise it.
At one point, Monero transactions were considered anonymous.
That means that by definition, anonymizing genomes is impossible. If someone tells you they will 'anonymize' your genome data, run away, they don't know what they are doing.
http://41j.com/blog/2018/11/illumina-consumables-are-90-prof...
Their overall gross margin is >60%. I suspect that instrument margins are actually also quite high, but they factor in R&D spending on instrument costs.
However, Dante labs appear to be using BGI, not Illumina for sequencing.
Even so, Dante is currently definitely operating at a loss. That’s not a problem though since their business model probably isn’t really consumer genetics. Likely, their actual business model (like that of every major player in the field) is gathering large panels of sequence data to either analyse themselves (and then sell the insight to pharmaceutical companies) or to sell (pseudonymised or aggregate) access to companies. So, in reality, they are preparing large-scale biomedical studies. And not only are they not paying study participants (their ostensible “customers”), they are actually getting the study participants to pay for their participation.
(Note that there’s nothing necessarily nefarious about this whole business. It just explains why they can offer their product to consumers “at a loss”. In reality it’s simply an investment.)
Wasn't Dubai trying to collect DNA on every citizen and visitor to their country?
Not saying this company is in anyway connected to Dubai but there are any number of reasons why a company might want to amass a large sampling of DNA and, although not a lawyer, I can think of some plausible ways to use that data too.
If they burn through any VC money they have amassing a database, then file bankruptcy or sell off their assets to satisfy debts before dissolving... "hey other company, that's totally not us or our investors, we gotta pay our taxes so we can dissolve, wanna buy some genomes wink wink?"
If you're really interested in DIYBIO there are subreddits and many tuts out there, but fair warning: getting started is easy, but the devil is in the details a heck of a lot more than learning to code.