[david_l_lin]

Short of giving away some of our secret sauce and analysis pipeline, what we do is sequence the nucleic acids in your saliva in a de-identified fashion such that only Bristle scientists can match your sequence data with any potential identifiers. As data comes off the sequencer, we use a bioinformatic pipeline to remove 98%+ of human genetic data prior to any analysis such that its impossible to derive meaningful genetic information from the sample. The end result is that we effectively store only microbiome sequence data and not your personal genetic data. We store all of your data in accordance with HIPAA guidelines.

Your de-identfiied data (metadata and microbiome data) may be used in aggregate analysis to mine for novel biomarkers of disease, and to develop novel therapeutics targeting the oral microbiome for the treatment of disease.

[jabyess]

Why not put all this info on the site?

[david_l_lin]

That's a great suggestion, we'll work on getting this added to our list of FAQs.

[verdverm]

Is the data really de-identified?

Would our microbiome data be a sort of fingerprint?