Genome researchers hit back at infosec bods' 'network vuln' claims The Global Alliance for Genomics & Health has downplayed vulnerabilities found in its genome-sharing network by two Stanford researchers. Carlos Bustamante and Suyash Shringarpure, postdoctoral scholars in genetics at Stanford, had raised concerns about The Beacon Project's security in a paper which showed the triviality of re …
If you got someone's DNA, there's a number of ways that are far cheaper to figure out the presence of any "pathogenic" alleles than full sequencing.
Even then, you'd be hard put to translate that to actual pathology, given that there's quite a few steps from genetic code, through expression, through development, and through habits/environment to the development of a certain pathology. Going that route would be doing things the *hard* way, if you want to dig up some dirt on someone.
It'd probably be easier, and certainly a hell of a lot cheaper and more efficient, to "simply" hack the master DB that does hold the actual personal data of the [serial number] genome.
exome chips are quite cheap. Full sequencing still seems a bit expensive ($1000). I was just at ASHG and that was a bit of a talking point - it seems to have got stuck at $1000/genome. Due inpart to the large over-sampling requirements...
Though I have heard rumours*, that's about to change...
P.
*no point being anon, not my rumour ;-)
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