23andMe PLoS Genetics Paper
Researchers at 23andMe have used the data that they’ve been collecting to publish a paper in PLoS Genetics. They’ve been having their users fill out surveys about things like how curly their hair is and whether they sneeze in bright sunlight.
Having this data along with thousands of SNPs allows them to search for correlations. They describe the mathematics of finding correlations between these datasets in their paper. It’s really pretty interesting.
Naturally some people have concerns, and it’s probably sensible that they’ve started with these fun, uncontroversial traits, but I would assume that they’re planning to target more interesting research. For example, maybe this sort of thing.