I agree with your general point, but here is a technical comment: 23andMe is the million most common SNPs, but that is not the same as the million most common variants, because not all variation is in the form of a SNP. SNP stands for "single nucleotide polymorphism" -- it means that one letter is changed while the context is unchanged. They are easy to detect because of that context, and that ease of detection is why they are used.
Another kind of variation is an insertion or a deletion. They are harder to detect, which is why 23andMe only detects three of them, ones in the BRCA gene that are common among Ashkenazi. It does not attempt to detect even the ones that are equally common among the Dutch. They are easy to detect with whole genome sequencing and they are valuable to detect because they are fairly easy to interpret: the whole protein is ruined. What the protein does and what you can do about it are harder problems, but it's not like finding a new SNP, where it probably means nothing.
A third kind of variation is copy number variation, where there is a repetitive section of the DNA and number of repeats varies from person to person. But whole genome sequencing today is bad at such regions, at least if the number of repeats is large. A lot of people think that they are important, but the fact that they are hard to measure makes that hard to assess at this time.
Hi, I was considering possibility of undergoing some kind of genetic testing for a while now. But I hesitated because I have a quite limited financial resources available right now. Eventually I've figured that in the future I'd do it anyway, so why don't just do it right away. Especially taking into account that knowing some data available via such tests in an earlier stage of life and acting on it could be quite beneficial in a long run.
So after that realization I've thought about going with 23andme and performing SNP genotyping. But in the process of browsing related information I've encountered article about rapid decreasing in price for Whole genome sequencing. After that I've found this listing: https://www.scienceexchange.com/services/whole-genome-seq?page=2 and the lowest price tag there is $795 (but it's not clear whether that particular option is applicable to human genomes).
And as a result the whole WGS thing seems quite appealing, but I have some concerns here. I still have quite limited finance and WGS seems to have at least 10x prize in relation to SNP. And the other concern is data applicability (more on this one further).
Information about what and how you can do with WGS data is somewhat scarce on the Internet. So I have some questions here:
I know that for SNP tests there are tools like Promethease (http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease) that allow you to analyze your data. But I was not able to find anything about tools for analyzing your WGS data.
So are there any good tools available for you to analyze your WGS data? And: Is it computationally feasible to get results in an adequate time, using a general pc for this purposes?
And finally with all above said: should I go for whole genome sequencing/SNP/or my whole line of reasoning is invalid and I should wait for now and get WGS in a few years for a smaller price?
(My main concern here is positive influence on health in a long run.)
Thanks.