[LINK] "Ancestry Gene Tests Need Firmer Science, Report Says"

[rfmcdonald]

This Bloomberg article on home genetic testing does make all the expected (and valid) points, and certainly the field needs to be regulated. I wonder, though, about the extent to which ancestry-related tests are undertaken for the purposes of wish-fulfillment ("Look, I'm part-Neanderthal!") and whether the science actually matters all that much to some users.

Ancestry.com Inc. in Provo, Utah, Pathway Genomics Corp. in San Diego, and 23andMe Inc. in Mountain View, California, are among almost 40 companies worldwide that sell such products. Officials from these enterprises should meet with geneticists, physicians and U.S. agencies to “brainstorm” about ways to improve their tests and databases, seven scientists said today in a report published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Scientists analyze DNA from mitochondria, the cells’ power-producing machinery, to study ancestry because it is passed down through generations directly from mother to child. That may lead to inaccuracies, because an exact genetic mitochondrial DNA match doesn’t tell scientists how closely related two people are, or where they came from, the authors wrote. Gene-based ancestry research has “intrinsic uncertainties” and needs “improved and enforced” standards, the researchers said.

“The time is now for no-holds-barred discussions among the players, particularly among scientists who must more purposefully and constructively critique one another’s premises, methodologies, findings, and interpretations of findings,” said the authors, led by Charmaine Royal, an associate research professor at Duke’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, in Durham, North Carolina.

Consumers shouldn’t jump to conclusions about lineage, or where ancestors might have lived, on the basis of genetic ancestry tests, said Joann Boughman, executive vice president of the American Society of Human Genetics, the Bethesda, Maryland- based organization that sponsored the study.

“It’s not that we don’t think ancestry is important or interesting -- we think it is,” Boughman said yesterday in an interview. “But these tests are complex, and there may be more variation” in a person’s roots “than is implied.”