Shopping with DNA
Retail genetic testing at DnaNudge
Quite unexpectedly, as I wandered around Convent Garden, London shopping today, I came upon a newly-opened retail store named dnanudge.
Intrigued, I walked in and started to read about the product on the store’s colorful information walls. The entire right side of the store was covered with bright information panels. The first one is shown below.
Shown below are the rest of the store’s walls, in order of how they are presented. The one that I spent the longest time reading was called ‘How does it work?’ and is shown below.
After you pay for and complete the DNA (or Nutrition) test, then you can purchase a DnaBand for your wrist. You have a choice of color for the band.
So, what can you do with this DnaBand? The store has an interactive wall to illustrate (shown below). A store employee demonstrated, using her band and the grocery product wall, how the system works.
The employee explained that when a user is grocery shopping, they can use their band to scan each grocery product. After scanning a grocery item, then the indicator light on their band will display red(not recommended), yellow(caution) or green(ok) depending on a combination of their DNA test results and their activity level for that day. She further explained that a grocery item that might be red on a low activity day, could show up as yellow or green on higher activity day.
The employee went on to explain that DnaNudge has announced plans to expand customized recommendations to other types of retail products (skin care and nutritional supplements) using this combination of personalized DNA data and daily activity levels.
Now I was really curious — what was actually being tested? How were the results presented? How were security and privacy of data handled? To start, there was yet another store information wall to show a sample test output (which customers get via a mobile application) and is shown below.
At this point, I decided I would try the test. Having done 23-and-me DNA testing multiple times already, I was quite curious as to what exactly was being tested and how the test would be conducted, and, of course, what my results would show.
The store employee prepared a unique barcode for my test and explained that they use saliva from cheek swabs. She instructed me to lightly rub each of the cotton swabs inside of my checks for 30 seconds on each side. Then she took the swabs, put small plastic containers over each of bottoms and put them into the case. She then put the lids on and put the containers into the analysis container (shown below). She explained that after the test was complete, the test material (saliva in small tubes) would be thrown away in the store.
Next she closed the container and brought it over to their in-store analysis machines. She then added a storage device to the top of the machine, pressed the button to start the analysis. The employee told me that I’d get an email with a unique ID (to use with my login to the DnaNudge mobile app) so that I could see my results within an hour or so.
About an hour later, I got the email, logged in to the app and took a look at my results. A partial view of my results is shown below. Because the service presently operates only in the UK, I declined to purchase a DnaBand. The employee explained that the company is working to expand next to the US and China.
I had to dig a bit to locate detail about exactly what was being tested and how the test was conducted. There wasn’t much scientific detail on the public website. However, in the FAQ (“About DnaNudge Genetic Test”) for the mobile app for DnaNudge, I found this information:
“What does the DnaNudge Test Cover?
The genetic test analyses genes associated with risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity, cholesterol, hypertension and caffeine metabolism. The test does not analyse your genes for risk of any other conditions…”
“How is my DNA sample analysed?
…the process detects the presence or absence of certain SNPs…The (test) Cartridge contains tiny wells loaded with ‘template’ strands of DNA with a specific pattern. If your DNA matches the template strand, it will bind to (the template)…this causes a chemical reaction which is detected by the NudgeBox.”
“What gene types do you analyse?
Our DNA test panel identifies several SNPs within genes that are associated with the propensity to develop chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity, cholesterol, hypertension and caffeine metabolism. Some companies test for more than this, but we aim for quality, not quantity.”
I also asked the store employee about her qualifications to work in this type of environment. She told that me that she is a bioinformatics graduate student here in London. When asked ‘what type of test is this?’ she explained ‘it’s a specialized PCA analysis.’ Here is a link to explain genomic PCA analysis (in a different context) for those who want to learn more about this approach.
There is also a section in the DnaNudge mobile app FAQs named ‘Data Privacy & Security’. In this section there is a detailed explanation of how a customer’s data (from saliva to DNA results) is handled.
I decided to write this article because I believe it will be increasingly important to understand the newly-emerging range of genetic testing types. This new retail implementation is quite innovative and it will be interesting to see what the impact will be for this type of testing and data integration.
