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Well the basic premise of the project was that I was hoping to find out as much about
myself as I could, and specifically my DNA, without any of the sort of safeguards that
you would expect that you would have to go through in order to get that sort of information.
I didn't go through a doctor, I didn't register with a genetic counsellor, there was nobody
getting me ready for what the results of my tests would be. My intention was to be out
there in kind of the wilds of the internet, with just me and my credit card. These companies
had no idea who I was, I was just buying data. Companies were selling DNA tests offering
you a variety of different stories about your life. There are DNA tests which were sold
on fear, so they were offers to package your DNA, store your DNA, allow you to identify
children who'd gone missing or make it easier to identify you if you were killed. DNA tests
which offered to tell you something fundamental about your history, so they would tell you
where your family came from, where your DNA came from, and the great myths of your past.
Tests which offered to predict the future for you; they would tell you when you will
die, what illnesses you would get. And finally there were the testers who were just offering
you fun, essentially. They would make you a necklace or a T-shirt or a stained-glass
window or a tie, based on some fairly unimportant bits of your DNA sequence. Most of the tests
required that you take a cheek cell swab. So basically you get an over-sized Q-tip,
and rub it quite *** the inside of each cheek and underneath your tongue. You have
to be quite harsh when you do it; it hurts. Your tongue and your cheeks will smart afterwards
if you do it properly.
So I'm holding in my hands the result of an ancestry test which I had done, and this is
a autosomal DNA test, so they tested all my DNA, to find out where it had come from in
the world and what my deep ancestral roots are. According to this, I'm 92 percent European,
6 percent East Asian, 2 percent Sub-Saharan African and 0 percent Native American. I have
to admit I was hoping for something a little bit more interesting. I have here the results
of another one of my tests. I've had something called the ACTN3 gene tested. Elite sportsmen
tend to have one particular form, and the rest of us have a different form entirely.
So it turns out I'm not going to be a great footballer when I grow up. But on the other
hand, if there's ever anything I need to do for a very long time, I have a lot of stamina.
I have a very low risk of glaucoma thankfully. I do however have a very high risk of age-related
macular degeneration. So there's a good chance that my eyes are going to pack in when I get
older, which is not the best news I've had all day, The DNA test results I've just had
through are from a company looking at a variety of different genes for me, and one of the
genes they're telling me about is called APOE, and they're very happy to tell me all about
m APOE results because I've got two versions of this gene, both of which are the same,
and they're both called APOE3. It would tend to mean that I have a lower cholesterol level.
The other good thing, that they haven't mentioned, is that having two copies of APOE3 means that
I don't have the high-risk APOE4 version which would mean that I'd be more likely to develop
Alzheimer's later in life. The other great things about this is that if I don't have
any copies of it, that means neither of my parents have enough copies to have a high-risk
allele, either. So here I've got the second set of results. This company have tested my
APOE gene exactly as the other one did. Immediately I've noticed something quite strange. This
company is saying that I'm APOE3/E4, so they say I have two different versions. So I'm
slightly confused and not quite sure what result I should be taking from it. So I'm
now reviewing another test. They've tested four genes that are involved in venous thrombosis.
There is something slightly worrying in here. This is the first time that I've had the words
'potentially high' in bold, in capital letters, in the section about my risk level. It turns
out that I have genetic variations that are believed to increase my risk over the general
population by a factor of about fifty. Thankfully, I'm not old, I'm not pregnant, I'm not using
an oral contraceptive, I'm not obese, I don't have diabetes, I've not had any recent major
surgery. So all of those factors I'm alright on, but the genetic factors I'm not doing
very well on at all. A lot of these results, if I hadn't been a geneticist in the past,
I would have opened them and probably been quite scared. Why on earth would anyone
want to know all these things about themselves? I think I've found out quite a lot of little
titbits about myself but nothing that's particularly going to change the way that I live my life.
I'm not going to grow up to be a great sportsman, but then I'm thirty-one and working in science,
I was never going to be a great sportsman. I might get fat when I get old, my eyes might
not work, I might get heart disease, I think that's true of absolutely everybody. I've
learnt some fairly meaningless things about myself. Supposedly I'm related to a woman
who lived in Italy 15,000 years ago and supposedly I have the most European DNA of anyone you're
likely to meet, but I don't think either of those is going to change the way that I live
my life.