ScienceDirect.com – Chemistry & Biology – As Personal Genomes Join Big Data Will Privacy and Access Shrink?
Monday, March 4th, 2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074552113000094
Volume 20, Issue 1, 24 January 2013, Pages 1–2
As Personal Genomes Join Big Data Will Privacy and Access Shrink? Jeanne Erdmann
Chemistry & Biology
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We live immersed in a world of big data. Every Internet click is tracked and noted—where we browse, what we view, how long we browse, where we shop, what we buy, what we “like.” In fact, many of our daily activities are monitored. Surveillance cameras track vehicles as they pass through intersections and track pedestrians as they walk down sidewalks; cameras note our transactions at ATMs. While it’s understandable to worry that so much surveillance invades our privacy, we may be overlooking the most personal information of all: the order of base pairs in our genomes. Each day, DNA sequencers worldwide churn out personal genomic data, which are then folded into large databases, some of which are open access, others of which are privately held. All of these big data collections carry value, and they’re mined for that value, whether it’s to tell Amazon what kind of books we like or to tell researchers whether our DNA carries variations that link to an increased risk for disease.
“I do think that those are parallel discussions,” says Mark Gerstein, PhD, a professor of bioinformatics at Yale University in New Haven. “But if you talk to most genomicists they don’t usually connect genomics with large-scale data mining on the web or in life.” They’re the same, Gerstein says. People may be attuned to the concept of secrets and privacy of personal information but not when it comes to mining terabytes of personal genomic information. The distinction is critical, because our tastes in books and music may evolve over the years, but our genomes never change.
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