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Comment by Rickasaurus | Hacker News Reader

I paid in at their first $99 discounted rate (2010) and was very disappointed when they tried to demand a non-discounted new sample for newer tests about a year later. If I had paid the full $500 I would have been downright peeved.

Still, I'm glad I did it, 23andMe is a very enlightening experience. I even found some distant relatives I never knew about.

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Honest question: Why would you need newer tests? Isn't your genetic code fixed along with all the risks it implies?

23andMe works by testing only a subset of all genetic SNPs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism ). It's not full DNA sequencing. The newer DNA microarrays contain a greater number of SNPs that they test for.

They aren't giving you the results of a complete sequence ($$$). They are looking for genetic variants. So newer tests will look for additional variants.

See: https://customercare.23andme.com/entries/21262606

They are not mapping your full genome each time. They are looking at specific genes that are known to be linked to certain conditions or attributes. When they release a new test, they are sampling more genes and therefore can find more potential conditions or attributes about you.

They ran an exome sequencing pilot recently, so sequencing is certainly coming.

It isn't entirely fixed, but what's changing are 23andme's tests: both genotyping and sequencing prices keep falling, so periodically they can upgrade the chips they use to ones which either cover more SNPs or improve the error rate (>99.9% accuracy still means a lot of errors on scores of thousands of SNPs) or both.

They do genetic testing, not genetic sequencing. They don't have your whole code.

I've been considering it too, it feels like as of recently the new findings coming out were done with new SNP's not tested previously. I'm just paranoid that i'll have to keep doing it ever 3 years. For now, i'm planning on waiting until there's a result i'm truly interested in.

> i'm planning on waiting until there's a result i'm truly interested in.

I did it on a whim, then it turned out I carry the gene for an elevated risk of something nasty. Then I was like, yeah, you got my attention now.

Just an example of how you could become "interested in" it post-hoc.

Just think how much worse Craig Venter must feel.

Or his dog for that matter.

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