ISTOCK, JOHAN63University of Pittsburgh researcher Seth Weinberg first got in touch with personal genetics company 23andMe to talk about data in September, 2015. He and Pittsburgh colleague John Shaffer were studying the genetic factors underlying earlobe attachment—whether that fleshy part at the bottom of the ear hangs loose or is fixed to the side of the head. By a few years ago, they and their collaborators had assembled genetic data from around 10,000 volunteers, and identified six loci in the human genome related to earlobe variation.
During the project, Weinberg recalled a 2010 research paper from 23andMe that had analyzed genetic data from several thousand customers who had consented to be involved in research and had entered information about themselves online. “This paper was about a bunch of different traits,” Weinberg tells The Scientist. “One of them was earlobe attachment.”
Weinberg reached out to see whether 23andMe might be willing to share that paper’s analyses. “They were enthusiastic about wanting to be involved,” Weinberg says. “A month or two into the process, they said, ‘Why don’t we just reanalyze the trait, and then you can update it from all the data we have available?’ It didn’t take us long to look at that option and say, ‘OK!’”
The data that 23andMe ...
