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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

I suppose you could try and see where I've been since I have my sequence publicly stored here https://my.pgp-hms.org/profile/hu81A8CC

If nothing else, I'll serve as a cautionary tale against this if something happens to me as a result of having my DNA publicly available to all.

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I keep my genome on my hard drive – it’s only a few tens of GBs!

Language models are pretty good at looking up and testing SNPs, but even that has low utility for me. Haven’t found a good use case for it yet.

How did you get it done and how much was it ?

Dante Labs: https://www.dantelabs.com/

I paid $2k at the time. Sequencing cost has fallen quite a bit but still has quite a bit to go.

I think there is a general over-emphasis on DNA. There is no process in nature that builds a cell out of DNA. Instead DNA is just part of the cell and the cell can slice-and-dice its own DNA however it wants. Neutrophils even throw their DNA outside of the cell in order to build traps for bacteria.

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/getting-over-the...

How much did getting your DNA sequenced cost?

Depends on when and what you're actually getting. SNP, WES, WGS are all very different costs.

~$400 from Nebula. BGI does sequencing for businesses lower than that but I don't know of consumer product.

My daughter, and any potential subsequent children, are also fully sequenced but that cost more: $2500/embryo through Orchid Health. Preimplantation testing is valuable.

I guess nothing will happen to you, but it's a bit like being naked on the internet?

a person is not their DNA

pictures of a person's private bits are more closely linked to their identity (or self-concept) than DNA?

One is alterable, the other isn't ..

More closely linked to their phenotype at any rate. And though DNA is in fact alterable, that's pretty irrelevant, culturally speaking.

Oops should have said raw, uncompiled, bits

I agree DNA isn't that culturally relevant to an identity but that just seems to be due to anti-intellectualism

Separate from the idea that the easier to alter something is, the more it should considered as a healthy part of identity..

> I agree DNA isn't that culturally relevant to an identity but that just seems to be due to anti-intellectualism

I think that the actual reason is that we know that a person isn't determined by their DNA alone, but there are many epigenetic factors at play, like the environment a person lives in while growing. Why you say it's due to anti-intellectualism?

Not alone, but I do believe the variation in personality (to the extent verifiable by twins studies) is at least half genetic

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118970843.ch...

So it should be at least "50% relevant"?

Anti-intellectualism.. meaning the idea that "common sense" is all that is needed to understand or work with the "self", no need to venture near abstract/symbolic models of "objective reality"

I do think altering epigenetics is the most efficient way to improve character-- but that some people don't think about this way is imho a sign that they don't think biological abstractions should be relevant to their everyday life :)

Both are alterable. Not sure what point you are trying to make.

That there is a optimal fluidity to a person's self-concept that is worth thinking about, in the unacknowledged gap between the performative extremes of preferred vs genotypic gender.

(DNA isn't as alterable as pics of your private bits, or even your actual private bíts..

Or we would have cured cancer by now. Without either resorting to surgery or diluting the term "biohacking")

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