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And the Winner Is …
via The Spittoon by (author unknown) on May 13, 2008
Shared by mndoci
Mike won. Why am I not surprised :)
Could this be Lilly Mendel?The judges have met and a winner has been chosen.
In the first 23andMe Win Your Genome Contest, the challenge was to describe Lilly Mendel – a real person whose data are presented in the 23andMe demo account – based on her genetic information alone. As we declared in the announcement of the contest, entries were judged based on accuracy, creativity and cleverness.
Cleverness we got. More than one entrant actually claimed to BE Lilly Mendel. Many entries employed flattery by concentrating on Lilly’s physical attractiveness, intelligence and athletic ability – very clever.
As for creativity, we have no idea where some of you got the idea that Lilly’s family harbors a secret fear of “gigantism,” that she enjoys dancing the tango or that her nose twitches when she gets angry. And though her genes may indicate a preference for the bignay fruit, we have no idea if she has ever tasted it.
But the clear winner in all three categories was Mike Cariaso, who sent us a detailed description based on data from the SNPedia database, an online compendium of genetic associations. Using software he has written (and made publicly available) that evaluates raw 23andMe data using the SNPedia database, he assembled a formidable description of Lilly. Its accuracy may have suffered a bit from the author’s speculation, but the creativity of those conjectures more than made up for it.
Click here to see Mike’s entry, which he posted on the SNPedia page (you can also see it after the jump). The description is annotated with SNPs and brief descriptions of what he gleaned from each of them.
As the winner of our first contest, Mike receives the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ for a person of his choice. We thank everyone else who entered, and encourage you to enter the next one, which should be announced in a few weeks.
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