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Comment by pooloo | Hacker News Reader

Unlikely as those services barely scrape the surface of genetic coding, if I recall they only sample from specific regions of the DNA to generate their data.

But I am also likely wrong, so I am hoping someone can challenge/confirm this thought.

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Correct, they genotype using a microarray.

https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/202904600...

Direct to consumer Whole Genome Sequencing is pretty affordable now, I had mine done at 30x coverage for $200 with Dante Labs.

Dante labs is actually a curious case.

People working in this field don't quite get how they could offer such a low price given cost of equipment and reagents.

The $200 is their sales price but it happens frequently enough that it’s not hard to get. The regular price is $600 and they do try to upsell with running disease specific tests against your genome. I thought the current wholesale cost of the genome sequencing was $75. After shipping costs there wouldn’t be much profit out of $200 So it is cutting things pretty lean but AFAIK still should be doable.

The cost of whole genome sequencing claimed by manufacturers is around $200 for the latest Illumina tech and sub 100$ for the latest MGI tech. All this assumes full load on max throughput machines - e.g. enough samples to sequence (otherwise the price invariably goes up).

These are not reference points for the pricing over the last couple years since these products were only announced last/this year respectively. 600$ WGS seems reasonable price for the last couple years in Europe, $200 is not. See this spreadsheet by @AlbertVilella who's a very useful source for his kind of stuff:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMMfhyLK0-q8XkIo3Yxl...

There is also Element and Ultima which I don't know much about except that Ultima tech seems to have noticeably higher sequencing error rate.

EDIT: @AlbertVilella corrected

It was actually €200 but at the time I did it the exchange rate was pretty close to 1:1, so a recent exchange rate drop could explain some of the discount. There is an added delay of 6 weeks to the special so I guess if they’re running under max utilization it could make sense to fit these in at above the cost of the reagent. There is also competition from Nebula Genomics so there is a market share and mind-space component to denying a competitor potential customers. I think I read something somewhere about cheaper bootleg reagent being used to get around patents. I think Nebula Genomics was hit by a lawsuit around that. Plus there is the potential outsourcing to less scrupulous countries that may go on to sell access to data. I think there was a rumor that Nebula Genomics was using a Hong Kong lab and later a Russian lab. I’m not worried about my DNA getting out, I already consider my DNA privacy defeated which was confirmed by my ability to find second cousins with it.

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