A new DNA sequencing service wants to reward you for sharing your data

Deanne Fitzmaurice / NGS / Alamy

By Alice Klein

A new company co-founded by Harvard geneticist George Church wants people to discover their genome for free. The secure blockchain service will secure the genome of people at no cost and offer rewards to those who allow third parties to access their data.

Consumers can already get their DNA sequenced by companies like 23andMe and Helix, but that usually costs around $ 200. If a user agrees, its results may be sold to third parties such as pharmaceutical companies, but users receive no compensation or reward for it.

Nebula Genomics, which is launched today, aims to connect consumers wanting to explore their genetics and researchers looking for large sets of DNA data to contribute to drug development. The co-founder, George Church, is a well-known pioneering geneticist from Harvard University. His other ambitions are to bring back the woolly mammoth, modify our genes to repair diseases and reverse aging.

Publicity

The service allows you to sequence your entire genome for free and secure it with the help of a blockchain. You can then share your genomic data anonymously with the companies or research institutes of your choice, in exchange for "Nebula credits".

Credit collection

Users will also receive credit for sharing other health related information, for example if they have diabetes or arthritis. This should help researchers identify patterns between certain gene variants and diseases, and potentially identify new target drugs, said company co-founder Dennis Grishin.

The credits earned by users will allow them to access other services on the Nebula platform. For example, they could be used to buy information about the risks of developing certain diseases such as breast cancer or Alzheimer's disease of a user, based on their genomic data.

For now, users will not be able to convert credits into cash. Pharmaceutical companies are currently willing to pay more than US $ 1,000 for individual genomes, but Nebula has not yet decided whether it would allow cash transactions, says Grishin.

Jacqueline Savard, Australian University Deakin, warns that some pharmaceutical companies can use people's data in a way that is unknown to them or unpredictable. "People should be free to do what they want with their genomic data," she says. "But you have to give them clear information on how it will be used to make the right decisions."