The ideal combination of the internet and science is to put data
(lots of data) into a readily searched database. The hypothesis becomes a search: Want to know what people are prone to which disease?
Want to know what genetic backgrounds compel certain behaviors? Run a search.

That’s the ideal — and though this idea has been hashed about for a few years, we're a long way from there now. No such database exists — an ongoing research project that combines enough data and enough flexibility in interrogation and enough variety in populations that it might adequately reflect a broad enough pool of data to be meaningfully searched.

Until, perhaps, today.

On Thursday, 23andMe will announce a project with the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center to enroll up to 10,000 people with Parkinson's Disease, get them genotyped using the 23andMe platform, and issue them a survey to fill in the phenotypic information. That physical "end result" correlation to their genotypic information should make for a rich and fruitful database, ripe for interrogation. With members' permission, it will be searched and probed for possible correlations and implications.

Ten thousand is a big number for Parkinson's disease, and researchers hope such a large population will allow them to draw meaningful inferences. (Linda Avey, 23andMe cofounder, describes the effort here).

The idea is to create a genetic database around one disease —
Parkinson's — that is robust enough to answer lots of questions that get into minutiae: If this isn't a "genetic disease" (typically brought on purely by genetic cause), then what are the fractions of effects caused by our genomes? It's a complicated question, but if we're really going to apply predictive medicine, we need to understand all the possible inputs that have ramifications in a multitude of outputs.

This is, in effect, the thing that's beentalked about for about five years now: Googling our genomes. And it's not surprising that behind this landmark endeavor is Google, or at least its co-founder, Sergey Brin. Brin, who has said he has a genetic risk for Parkinson's, has funded the study and promised to give 10,000
people their genomic data for just $25 each (the 23andMe service regularly costs about $400). So that's at least a $4 million commitment, at least at the going rate of genotyping — and that's not counting the backend research that will take place. Brin will participate in the study.

I don't doubt that many folks will be skeptical of this endeavor (Valleywag and Steve Murphy, start the race to be the first to squat on this with some snide remark, starting … now!) And sure, I acknowledge that 23andMe is good at publicity. But I think there's a fundamental shift in science here that should not go unnoted.

This is an endeavor to create an apparatus for answers; answers not just to the questions we have today, but the questions science will have or 10 years from now. This is, indeed, science by search. And I'm thrilled that somebody's actually trying to make it happen. And here's what’s especially cool: 23andMe co-founders Ann Wojcicki and Linda Avey know this is what they’re doing. They talk about this as a "research platform," and they have a host of diseases that they want to hit next:
Autism, Alzheimer's and so on. Expect more this year.

Again, this isn't a research study — this is a new way to study research. Make the costs of research recruitment (finding populations to study, recruiting individuals, taking samples and repeating every time you have a new question to ask) a backend function, and prioritize the questions, not the apparatus. It's how to do science in the petabyte age.

— Thomas Goetz

See Also:

• Human Genetics is Now a Viable Hobby -- 23andMe Cuts its Price to $399
• 23andMe to California: We're Not Ceasing or Desisting
• The Next Step in Space Exploration: Billionaire Scientists
• The First 10 Teams in the Lunar X Prize An Odd Lot
• Stem Cells for Parkinson's Disease: Breakthrough or Hype?
• Early Success in Gene Therapy for Parkinson's

Image: jdlasica/Flickr