Nature’s Journal Club column is usually a good & always a short read providing exciting angles on scientific topics/papers from good researchers. Recently ‘neuroscientist’ Dave Featherstone argued for a broader approach to brain mapping by not restricting it only to the connectome between neurons. Neurons are making up less than 10% of the human brain while most brains cells are glia neglected by scientists making the wiring diagram of a ‘complete’ human brain.

For example, consider the recent study of adenosine and sleep led by Philip Haydon and Marcos Frank at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (M. M. Halassa et al. Neuron 61, 213–219; 2009). Adenosine binds to receptors on neurons, thereby regulating neuronal signalling. Interestingly, adenosine seems to represent ’sleepiness’: it accumulates during wakefulness and dissipates during sleep. Where does it come from? It is generated from adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is secreted by astrocytes — a major type of glia.
Therefore, if we want to map the functional brain connections controlling sleep, we need to include glia and the extracellular space between glia and neurons. If we’re going to understand brain function by mapping the brain, we need to include most of the brain in our map.

I tried to draw an analogy between the situation in brain mapping and personal genomics on FriendFeed:

Update: it seems Dave Featherstone had something similar in mind as an analogy, he answered my email the following way:

Yeah, that’s a good analogy. The original version of my column said the connectome would be like if the human genome had only sequenced exons. But that sentence was cut for space considerations.

Last Friday 23andMe came up with Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper which is the first experimental feature that can be instantly tested by biogeek customers (a large portion of  the company’s customer base) in its freshly launched technology sandbox 23andMe Labs that is much like Google Labs.

Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper “shows you which particular mutations in a person’s mitochondrial DNA (maternal ancestry) or Y chromosome (paternal ancestry) were used to determine their haplogroup assignment.”

Basically you are picking the Y chromosome or type the name of a maternal mitochondrial haplogroup (like T) into the search box and as a result you get a list back with the position and id-s of the defining mutations. With that information you can play different genetic genealogy games if you like.

But playing with a pure textual list of SNPs doesn’t sound too fascinating and the tool is not really a “Mapper” as there’s no visualization included. Wouldn’t it be nice if you can visualize all those haplogroup defining SNP positions at once and get extra biological information on them right away? Well, you cannot do that within the 23andMe website but you can do that with Mitowheel which is a graphical representation of the circular human mitochondrial genome (Disclaimer: I am part of developer team, see post and the Mitowheel blog).

For instance the SNPs on the left are parts of the T haplogroup defining mutations used by 23andMe. The rCRS is the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence, the rs<numbers> are the reference cluster IDs of SNPs. rCRS is a reconstruction of a single European individual’s mtDNA, the source was an unnamed placenta without further identity and it contains several rare alleles. I’ve also heard rumors that some blurry nucleotides were replaced by cow DNA. The rCRS nevertheless provides a uniform nucleotide numbering scheme (0-16569) even if the 3106 position is a phantom position (like chief evangelist) as there was an incorrect duplication of 3107C in the original sequence. So if you check the rCRS positions on the list, the one you should use in Mitowheel is +1 position away that you can see in parentheses if you click on the individual SNP rsids within the 23andMe site.

So here are all the positions 23andMe is using for T haplotyping and you can type them into the Mitowheel search box: 10463, 13368, 14905, 15607, 15928, 188, 4917, 709, 8697 and step through all of them by clicking the arrow in the search box and get a lot of extra information by checking the info popup box.

As a 23andMe customer you can instantly look for functional information on your particular SNPs with Mitowheel by adding the nucleotide letters of your specific mutation to the positions like in 8697A, so the following is the result of the search for all of my T defining SNPs: 10463C, 13368A, 14905A, 15607G, 15928A, 1888A, 4917G, 709A, 8697A

As Mitowheel incorporates data on fully sequenced human mitochondrial genomes that have been deposited in the GenBank database the allele frequencies of 23andMe customers can be checked at those positions and groups can be created based on Gábor Zsurka’s, Mitowheel founder, post. Each little gray bar above or below a nucleotide letter represents the number of individuals who carry a SNP at the given position as compared to the revised Cambridge reference sequence.

The group creating search looks like the following in case of my T defining SNPs (a plus sign is added to the search items above):

+10463C, +13368A, +14905A, +15607G, +15928A, +1888A, +4917G, +709A, +8697A

Surprise email from Conor McKechnie, GE Healthcare proving the aesthetics of science and the value of blogging:

A while (!) back you posted an inspiring piece linking to Harvard’s BioVisions inner life of the cell – it was 2006…It got me thinking that we could do something similarly inspiring with actual cellular images entered into our annual cellular analysis image competition. It took 2 years to make it happen, but finally:
We have just posted a social media release highlighting the winners’ images being shown on the jumbotron in Times Square, with a short narrated film about the images and what they could mean for medical research, posted on YouTube:

Video interviews with the winners in Times Square on YouTube:

Short listed entries on a public site to inspire and encourage people to share in the beauty of science.

I hope you enjoy the links – and thanks for being the initial spark of inspiration.

regards

Conor

Let us assume that you are a technological early adopter, a maker, a hacker, a geek. Your software/hardware skills and experiences are much better than the bulk of licensed physicians. You also have a G1.

Now imagine a mobile application/gadget-in-a-belt-pouch that is the most advanced telemedicine solution in the market. With this application/gadget you were able to non-invasively monitor vital signs of the people that matter you the most at anytime from anywhere around the world. You were able to quickly recognize life threatening heart and respiratory problems of the people you care about and maybe save their lives.

The problem is that such a product exists according to this press release (via androidguys) but you are not allowed to legally use it (no information on the details of purchase yet) unless you are a registered and licensed physician. The press release does not offer any reasonable (legal?) explanation on why this is the case.

The Dyna‐Vision© G1 Android Telemedicine Application by RS TechMedic B.V (“specialized in creating very easy-to-use user interfaces”) will be officially launched during the CeBIT starting today:

Dyna‐Vision© is a small light weight and portable device, with the dimensions of a PDA. The patient wears this device in a belt pouch. This reliable and sophisticated medical device monitors up‐to 10 clinical parameters through non‐invasive sensors attached to the skin. The measurements include 12‐lead ECG, Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, RR‐times, Respiration, Plethysmogram and Oxygen
Saturation.

Dyna‐Vision© automatically transmits cardiac events and even continuous real‐time ECG recordings to a secured server. Besides using a computer or laptop, physicians can now also monitor a patient’s real‐time vital signs on a G1 Android mobile phone. Physicians can use the application at anytime from anywhere around the world.

The Dyna-Vision G1 Telemedicine Application can only be used by licensed physicians after registration with RS TechMedic B.V.

Take a look at the FDA Application Approvals 2000-2008 visualization (created by user mktlgcs) over at IBM’s Many Eyes to get an aerial view on the US. pharmaceutical industry.

Forbes article: Letting Google Take Your Pulse via @mattcutts:

On Thursday, Google and IBM will unveil a new initiative that will allow Google Health, a site where users can store and track information about their medical history, to connect to and stream data from medical devices. In demonstrations, IBM and Google fitted Wi-Fi radios to gadgets like heart rate monitors, blood pressure cuffs, scales and blood-sugar measurement meters, allowing the devices to communicate with a PC and feed real-time medical information directly into Google’s online records.

Hooking up those devices to the Web, IBM argues, will offer a new immediacy and granularity of health monitoring. A user can remotely track the blood pressure readings or glucose levels of a diabetic parent living alone, or stream his or her medical information like weight or heart rate directly to a doctor or physical trainer.

“If there’s something abnormal, you can catch it before you have an episodic intervention, like going to the emergency room,” says Dan Pelino, manager of IBM’s health care division. “This is like OnStar for a patient, keeping constant information about you and sending alerts even before you have a problem.”

More on Google Health on Pimm:

Meet Dr. Google Health: Roni Zeiger, right from Stanford!

Google Factory Tour of Health: watch the pivotal moment!

FriendFeed comments: The hidden backyard

Late Google Health: catching up with the past, first!

A bit of history: The official launch of Google Health, 19/05/08

The folks at The Institute for the Future have been busy lately and as a result Signtific has been launched replacing ScienceX2! Check this, the about and FAQ pages if it’s new to you or just simply explore.

After the Nature cover article Hugh Rienhoff and the story of My Daughter’s DNA is now covered by Wired magazine. I wrote about Hugh (a fellow SciFoo Camper) as an example of any future bioDIY effort in The conditions of a mass biotech DIY movement and now the Wired piece gives us more context and details concerning how things were actually done. This is really a story that cannot be overemphasized by simply telling it again and again. 

By making inquiries with local surplus brokers, Rienhoff discovered he could buy a secondhand PCR machine for less than a MacBook. He ended up purchasing a full working model for just $750.
Obtaining additional supplies, like the PCR reagents, for his experiment was tougher. Some chemical companies didn’t want to ship to a private address, so Rienhoff pretended his house was the headquarters of the fictional Institute for Future Study.

While Rienhoff could spring for his own PCR machine, a used gene sequencer (assuming he could find one) would cost around $100,000. So he found a university lab (which he declines to identify) that would sequence the genes he had amplified, for $3.50 per 50-microliter sample. In spring 2007, Rienhoff mailed in more than 200 samples.

Rienhoff compared Beatrice’s DNA with the information on Ensembl, looking for any base-pair variants that hadn’t been previously recorded on Ensembl. He was operating on the assumption that Beatrice’s genetic blip was completely unknown, which would explain why she’d been so hard to diagnose. The job was daunting: The printouts contained data for approximately 20,000 base pairs, and there was no feasible way to automate the hunt for variants. After putting in a full day of consulting and then getting the kids to bed, Rienhoff would retire to his attic and spend hours checking Beatrice’s adenines (A), thymines (T), guanines (G), and cytosines (C) against the Ensembl reference genome.

]]> http://pimm.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/practical-dna-hugh-rienhoffs-got-a-story-to-tell/feed/ 1 attilachordash http://pimm.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/bioblocks-outsourcing-biotech-one-block-at-a-time/ http://pimm.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/bioblocks-outsourcing-biotech-one-block-at-a-time/#comments Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:53:33 +0000 attilachordash http://pimm.wordpress.com/?p=2356 ]]>

Friend Dan Erlanson (Co-Editor in Chief of the niche and smart Fragment-based Drug Design blog Practical Fragments) sent me this story on the recession proof business model of a biotech company called BioBlocks and his founder medical chemist Peter Pallai:

Approximately one out of 5,000 compounds pass an initial screen, hit the designated biological target, and end up making it to clinical trials. So Pallai’s pitch is simple. He and his team are good at one thing-chemical synthesis of new drug candidates to hit those targets. By outsourcing this piece of the puzzle to his team of chemists, about 25 of whom work in Budapest, Hungary, biotech companies can get the work done fast and well, he says. It makes sense professionally for his chemists as well, because they can get steady work, rather than hitch their wagons to one of hundreds of biotechs that dream of becoming the next Genentech, but are more likely to end up flaming out in a few years.

The first Euro Maker Faire in Brussels was an evening event but now with the first UK Maker Faire makers have a chance to hang around for 2 days and develop or deepen their DIY skills similar to the original US events (we enjoyed Austin Maker Faire in 2007). Let me know if you’re interested.

from my mailbox:

We are shortly to publicly announce the first UK Maker Faire but thought you would appreciate advanced notification.
The Make team forwarded me your names and email addresses as they believe you might be interested in the Newcastle upon Tyne Maker Fair on March 14th-15th 2009.

The first UK Maker Fair will take place in Newcastle 14-15 March as part
of Newcastle ScienceFest – a 10 day festival celebrating creativity and
innovation.

This two-day, family-friendly event celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset and features interactive exhibits organized by individual enthusiasts, hobbyist groups and clubs as well as student groups. It’s for creative, resourceful folks who like to tinker and love to make things. Maker Faire is an opportunity to share what you do with others.

Are you interested in joining us in Newcastle and showing off your latest exhibits?
Please let us know and we will forward you details as they become available.

I would appreciate if you could send me a list of your fellow makers that you think would appreciate this advanced notification.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Kindest regards
Josette
###
Josette Garcia
O’Reilly UK Limited
www.oreilly.com

In the past months Thomas Goetz begun writing a book on the radical changes already ongoing but mostly upcoming in healthcare due to affordable new technologies and quantitative approaches in personalized genomics and medicine.

The book is to be called The Decision Tree (explanation below) accompanied by a new website. Thomas is the perfect man for this job, he is the deputy editor of Wired magazine (=he is well informed and connected), a good journalist who took his job (writing on science, health and medicine) so seriously that he went back to school to get a degree in Public Health. Back in the days his very early coverage on 23andMe (actually published before the official launch of the service) was actually the only serious insight on 23andMe.

With this book Thomas will have a chance to become the Chris Anderson or Malcolm Gladwell of personalized medicine and public health.

“The premise is that we are at a new phase of health and medical care, where more decisions are being made by individuals on their own behalf, rather than by physicians, and that, furthermore, these decisions are being informed by new tools based on statistics, data, and predictions. This is a good thing – it will let us, the general public, live better, happier, and even longer lives. But it will require us to be stewards of our health in ways we may not be prepared for. We will act on the basis of risk factors and predictive scores, rather than on conventional wisdom and doctors recommendations. We will act in collaboration with others, drawing on collective experience with health and disease, rather than in the isolation and ignorance that can come with “privacy” concerns. And we will act early, well before symptoms appear, opting to tap the science of genomics and proteomics in order to mitigate our risks down the road.

Together, these tools will create a new opportunity and a new responsibility for people to act – to make health decisions well before they become patients. This can be characterized as a decision tree, a series of informed choices we will make to minimize uncertainty and optimize our outcomes. Indeed, we will use decision trees to navigate most of our health decisions, sometimes in overt ways – new decision support tools will both inform us and guide us, and they’ll be steeped in statistics, prediction, and the power of collective experience.”

Nature’s newest issue has a Quantitative genetics supplement with 3 free access pieces included out which I find this review the most interesting: Reverse engineering the genotype–phenotype map with natural genetic variation by Matthew V. Rockman. There’s a lot information to digest and many patterns to understand in this background field in order to approach the future of (personal) genetics/genomics.

After the first Twitter prediction here is my second one back from September, realized today:

and here we go….Happy Holidays Grandma you’got a 2fold risk for psoriasis but don’t worry too much about the Alcohol Flush Reaction and your caffeine consumption!

Actually I tried to convince Anna and my mom, also other relatives to enter the field of personal genomics and give me 2 mls of spits…so 3 kits would cost me circa 1000 bucks plus 3x$70 Fedex damage (no combined Fedex package for 3 kits?)…and how many dollars do I have? Oh, I think that’s private and hope Anna won’t read this post too.

But who will genotype Santa? And what about the singles? By the way, Christmas, here’s my video for you:

Tip: Genetic Future

How do you interpret the following situation: we have a life extension technologist whose all endeavors is about pushing this issue to its very limits and making things possible but on the other hand this very life extensionist himself is not driven by actually living as long as he can.

It seems that SENS theorist Aubrey de Grey, who is chronologically 45, (BioBarCamp photo by Ricardo) is taking roughly the above position in a recent interview. Aubrey is a good and witty interviewee and of course the interpretation of what he is saying is strongly context dependent so here is the full question and answer:

Question: One hundred years of life can wear you down physically, but it can also wear you down emotionally… perhaps even existentially. For you, is a desire to live long accompanied by a desire to live long in a much-improved human civilization, or is this one satisfactory?

Aubrey de Grey: I’m actually not mainly driven by a desire to live a long time. I accept that when I’m even a hundred years old, let alone older, I may have less enthusiasm for life than I have today. Therefore, what drives me is to put myself (with luck) and others (lots and lots of others) in a position to make that choice, rather than having the choice progressively ripped away from me or them by declining health. Whether the choice to live longer is actually made is not the point for me.

Let’s see 2 possible and extreme interpretations of this answer (neither of them is my own interpretation) and I hope my readers can find fine-tuned arguments in between while thinking a bit about this still rather philosophical topic:

1., Saying that we want the process (a robust healthy lifespan technology) but not necessarily the product (a robust healthy lifespan) of our own business is a disaster from a marketing point of view and has a withdrawal feeling that comes in handy for any kind of anti-life extension position. It’s Steve Jobs using a Windows PC instead of a Mac and an Android G1 instead of an iPhone. Or simply it is Aubrey saying no to a would-be personal MitoSENS somatic gene therapy putting backup copies of Aubrey’s own vulnerable mitochondrial genes into the nuclei later on in order to live a longer life.

2., It’s the only realistic position current day middle aged life extensionists can take: working to empower future generations to make that choice while it is utterly unrealistic that any substantial technological benefit will return to the current generation. From this angle the life extensionist activity can be interpreted as a noble altruist endeavor raising intergenerational justice by reducing the asymmetry in the relations of past and future generations.

Update: Aubrey was kind enough to answer my interpretative question in a detailed comment included here:

Neither of these interpretations is correct, not even close! My answer in that interview (which I have given in many other places too) is a true reflection of what I feel. Concerning (2), no, I think I do have a respectable chance of benefiting from rejuvenation technologies, especially since I’m signed up to be cryopreserved. Concerning (1), the product is not only the lifespan but the avoidance of frailty and disease, and that’s the main thing that drives me (which is convenient, because it is indeed easier to market).
But even if we presume complete success against frailty and disease, and we just look at lifespan per se, then I don’t see any problem with my position – either a logical problem or a marketing problem. I think there are valid reasons for wanting to live literally forever, particularly the philosophical view that one’s life is meaningless if one ever dies – but I don’t hold that view, or at least I don’t base my life around any concept of the meaning of life. Wanting to live as long as one can is something that can be motivated by, for example, having things one wants to do that may take an extremely long time, such as visiting extrasolar planets – but I don’t have any such desire. One might want to avoid dying for social reasons, such as preventing the suffering of one’s loved ones who will be bereaved, but that’s not much of a reason in my view. Then there is the innate enjoyability of life, the fact that certain activities provide immediate pleasure – but death removes the
motivation to plan for future gratification, so “living for the moment” doesn’t seem to motivate living longer than the specific moments that one is already anticipating. So, what does that leave? – only a desire to live long enough to fulfil one’s current goals, plus an expectation that one will continue to acquire new goals. But an expectation of future desires is not the same as a present desire, because the expectation may not be borne out: it’s only an argument for forward planning. And that’s all I was saying.

forwarded, nonpersonal mail from Maya Kennard (you might get that email too):

Resource link/Story suggestion for your website:Title: VADLO – Biomedical Search Engine
Description: Vadlo is a search engine for the biology/biomedical scientists, educators, clinicians and reference librarians.
References
Also check the Daily cartoons!

The idea is that we feed them with searches and links and they will grow big enough to give us more and more relevant searches and links. Magic concept: scalability, check the motivation behind the name choice:

Vadlo: (vud-lo) – Vadlo is a large fig tree characterized by aerial roots that eventually become accessory trunks. This allows it to grow horizontally to amazing proportions.

I find the 5 basic search categories amazing and after a short tinkering it can already throw out interesting sources:

From the about page:

Protocols category will let you search for methods, techniques, assays, procedures, reagent recipes, plasmid maps, etc. Online Tools will cater calculators, servers, prediction tools, sequence alignment and manipulation tools, primer design etc. Seminars are essentially powerpoint files for presentations, lectures and talks. Databases will take you to, well, databases, resources, compilations, lists etc. It is here that you can also search for your favorite genes and proteins. Software category is for bioinformatics experts who are looking for codes, scripts, algorithms, executables, downloadable programs and collaborations. Please realize this is beta, or pre-beta, if you prefer. Vadlo index is expanding everyday and your favorite link/s will be indexed pretty soon.

New 23andMe website animation on human prehistory made by Ariana Killoran. Ariana created all the Genetics 101 films for 23andMe and the narrator was her pa. With these films the company clearly sets a new standard in popular scientific animations and videos.

Homo Erectus:

Neanderthal:

What do you think, which company launched the first commercial and comprehensive personal genome service (based on a genome-wide SNP scan) on the market and exactly when?

We have 2 candidates here in the ring deCODE Genetics (founded in 1996, Iceland) and 23andMe (founded in 2006, USA), the Amundsen and Scott of personal genomics. (please don’t take the analogy too seriously)

The when is important from a historical point of view because that day will be considered as the birthday of this infant industry. The birth month and year is November 2007 for sure. That means we are just approaching the 1 year anniversary of the commercial personal genetics/genomics industry and this sounds like a good timing to think about the achievements so far and the future ahead.

But let’s figure out the exact date first and here I think we should consider the day on which a personal genome service was launched for the first time directly available to costumers and when the first public orders were taken.

Using this measure it seems that the historically first personal genome service deCODEme was actually launched by deCODE Genetics on Friday, November 16, 2007. The official launch of 23andMe’s service was on Monday, November 19 although the first public orders could have taken even on Saturday, November 17. The media coverage of 23andMe was far more intense than of deCODE, including early service testing professional journalists by Wired and the New York Times. Likewise the blog coverage including me amongst others.

Over at the deCODE blog there was a bitter post apropos of the TIME Magazine announcement last week that the Personal Genome Service™ from 23andMe, Inc. has been named 2008’s Invention of the Year. In the post the company name 23andMe was not even mentioned 1 time:

deCODE staffers were buzzing about Time magazine’s announcement this week of its best invention of 2008: the retail DNA test. As the creators of deCODEme, the first personal genome scan on the market, deCODE staff members were not about to quibble about the date (deCODEme was actually launched on November 16, 2007).

Indeed, the value of deCODE’s capabilities and service is perhaps best demonstrated by the launch of web portals offering similar services based largely upon deCODE’s discoveries, and Time’s article underscored the potential of this new field by devoting considerable attention to the high-powered tech luminaries who have come chasing deCODEme’s tail.

The truth is that both companies are real pioneers in this very competitive landscape and that is something beyond doubt.

Happy First Birthday large-scale, low cost commercial personal genomics! (Perhaps the timing of Nature’s recent Personal Genomics Special is not just a coincidence.)

Here’s my gift video:

The newest Nature issue concentrates on personal genomics and its consequences via many types of articles some of them with free access.

I only read 1 piece so far by Erika Check Hayden, who has the exclusive freedom at Nature to always pick the best stories and write on any of them, but being a heavy 23andMe user I was instantly reminded again on the program Promethease with which I can extend the interpretation of my data with an approximately 2 hour run.

According to two commercial gene-testing services — 23andMe and deCODEme — US Army medic Timothy Richard Gall of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, has a higher-than-average risk of basal cell carcinoma, type 2 diabetes and psoriasis. But much more enlightening than these results, which cost Gall more than $1,400, was a free online program called Promethease that he used to further analyse the data. By offering more in-depth information and interpreting of more of his genetic variants, Promethease “gives a much more realistic view of the usefulness of the information”, Gall says. Start-ups and services such as Promethease are now developing ways to improve the limited value of information provided by personal genomics companies for consumers and scientists alike.

A new, completely rewritten, integrated nature.com website blogs.nature.com has been launched by the Natureplex people – informed his Twitter pals Euan Adie:

Also, blogs.nature.com v1 is live! Tequila and donuts all round. Early n’ often release v2 coming on the 18th so get any bug reports in now.

Suggest good science blogs that are not listed on the Nature Blogroll yet.

This is a golden day for 23andMe despite all crisis worries:

Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) October 30, 2008 — TIME Magazine announced today that the Personal Genome Service™ from 23andMe, Inc. has been named 2008’s Invention of the Year. 23andMe was chosen as the year’s most significant invention for its exceptional work in making personal genomics accessible and affordable.

From the industrial point of view what are the components of success here besides the obviously good team:

- mission: big, Google-sized mission: revolution of health care by personal genetic information as the source of upcoming personalized medicine

- biotechnology: based on the highest available technology platforms in microarrays (Illumina) (watch out, next gen sequencing is in the corner!)

- capital investment and network effect: I can only repeat myself:  23andMe is probably the most well-connected and backed startup in the history of Silicon Valley.(photo: happy 23andMe founders and early customers)

- information technology the cool and user-friendly factor of the browser based service is really amazing (in the past couple of weeks I demonstrated it to a bunch of people and even those were able to catch the essence of the available information who are older, web-unsavvy)

- simplicity of service: you just spit 2ml into a tube and FedEx it

- most aggressive marketing strategy based largely on the network effect among the power elite of the USA (and consequently, the world)

From the consumer point of view let me tell you 1 personal example of the lifestyle effect of the service: I am a coffee person who drinks usually 2 cups of coffee/day with a lot of milk and 1 coffee spoon of sugar. According to 23andMe I’m a fast caffeine metabolizer and lactase persistent/lactose tolerant which roughly means that I am cool with my current coffee drinking habit concerning the amounts of coffee and milk. Being a fast caffeine metabolizer suggests that drinking coffee probably doesn’t increase my heart attack risk although this is only a preliminary result that needs to be confirmed on larger statistical samples. Being lactose tolerant suggests that I probably don’t have to bother with the amount of milk in my coffee although I may still be lactose intolerant for other reasons which does not seem to be the case. But there’s 1 more component, the sugar and here it turns out that I have a bigger than average genotype specific risk for Diabetes Type 2 which is a serious business. So in this case my personal genotyping results confirm my everyday life practice and pushes me toward consuming even less sugar. Ever since I know this result I’m drinking coffee with only half spoon of sugar and also started to exercise daily.