國家地理:你的醫(yī)療未來(1)

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I would never have met Harriett were it not for our mutual friend, Linda. I'm a physician in Northern California; Harriett's a communications executive in New York City. Linda co-founded an online personal genomics company, to which Harriett and I each sent our genetic information for analysis.

若不是因?yàn)槲覀兊墓餐笥蚜者_(dá)，我永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)認(rèn)識(shí)哈里特。我是北加州的醫(yī)師，而哈里特是紐約市一家通信公司的主管。琳達(dá)與友人合資創(chuàng)辦了一家在線個(gè)人基因組公司，哈里特和我分別把自己的遺傳信息寄給這家公司分析。

Linda introduced us after she saw that Harriett and I had something in common: a rare type of mitochondrial DNA, which meant we were distantly related. It turns out that we also share that genealogy with a prehistoric celebrity: Ötzi the Iceman, whose 5,300-year-old frozen corpse was discovered in the Alps in 1991. For fun, I even started a Facebook group for people with the same DNA variant as Ötzi and Harriett and me.

我們是經(jīng)琳達(dá)介紹才認(rèn)識(shí)的，因?yàn)榱者_(dá)發(fā)現(xiàn)哈里特和我有個(gè)共通點(diǎn)：一種罕見的粒線體DNA，這表示我們是遠(yuǎn)親。結(jié)果表明，我們還與一位史前名人--奧茲冰人--有著相同的系譜。1991年，人們在阿爾卑斯山發(fā)現(xiàn)了這一冰封了5300年的尸體。為了好玩，我甚至為跟我和哈里特?fù)碛邢嗤珼NA變異的人成立了臉書社團(tuán)。

I tell this story to make a point. Harriett and I met over a feat of biomedical science -- mass-market, low-cost gene analysis -- that once was unimaginable and now is commonplace. The convergence of digital technologies and social platforms made it possible for us to learn our genotypes and share what we found out with the online universe.

我講這個(gè)故事是為了說明一個(gè)觀點(diǎn)。哈里特和我會(huì)相識(shí)，是因?yàn)樯镝t(yī)學(xué)的一項(xiàng)成就--針對大眾市場的低成本基因檢測。這樣的基因檢測在過去是難以想象的，現(xiàn)在卻不足為奇。數(shù)字科技與社交平臺(tái)的融合，讓我們有可能知道自己的基因型，并且與網(wǎng)絡(luò)世界分享我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)。