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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent

Googling your genes steps closer to reality

There were plenty of reasons to be interested in the news that Google has invested almost $4m in 23andMe, the genetics company created by Anne Wojcicki, who married Sergey Brin earlier this month.

As our Wall Street correspondent Andy Clark noted, 23andMe "aims to unite people with copies of their genetic blueprint".

My first thought was that I wouldn't necessarily be too happy if I was a Google shareholder. Regardless of the intrinsic value of 23andMe or its potential, there are always going to be questions when the principals are as closely related as this. In Google terms, though, $3.9m is a drop in the ocean when it's prepared to invest zillions in other companies so it might not become a topic of debate.

The second thought was about the long-term implications of this investment. What happens when you can sequence your own genetic code? What can we find out about the human race when that data is searchable? And what happens when that data is owned by a third party?

Back in 2004, Glyn Moody wrote a piece for us about the ethical questions of googling the genome - at that time it was a possibility, now it seems a probability.

Of course, this isn't Google's first foray into genetics. In 2005 Craig Venter - the legendary businessman/biologist who launched his own commercial genome sequencing scheme in competition with the Human Genome Project - said that he was working with Google to catalogue the genome and make it searchable.

It seems the mission to organise the world's information has stepped up a notch or two.

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