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by datz 4850 days ago
23andme is babyish relative to what's coming. Even exome sequencing does not provide the whole story. There are so many conditionals, so many sequences important in regulation, so much of the "dark" genome that actually codes for RNA. Sure, some SNPs are highly predictive, but there are compensatory mutations and regulatory gene circuits. Everything works together and must be weighed together. Even with whole genome we still need epigenetics and we need time-lapse data and sampled location specific (cell and organ system) genomic data to really produce clinically relevant predictions.
3 comments

Interpretation is an indefinite field - statisticians and econometricians will be highly valued.
We hope as more data becomes available, the field will become more and more definite. We will use indefinite mathematics in genomic interpretation until we have near perfect information.
I can't find the reference but micro-RNA as short as two base pairs has been shown to affect gene expression. Nonlinearity may seriously inhibit meaningful analysis.