At the end of last year we announced that we’ve got some funding from the German WikiMedia foundation to get more people – who are willing to share their results – genotyped. We have now settled on a process that should allow us to perform the project without too many problems. Starting today, you can apply for one of the free genotypings. The deadline for applications is Sunday, 03/25/12 23:59 o’clock, so you still have some time to think about an application. In the two weeks following the deadline, we will select as many participants as we can afford to get genotyped using the 5000 Euros we received from Wikimedia. We’ll get in contact with everybody who has sent an application to let all applicants know whether their application was successful or not.

The genotyping will be done through 23andMe. We will order you a gift kit which will be delivered to your address. These gift kits include prepaid access to the 23andMe website for 12 months, so you can check up on the latest findings about your genetic variation as well. After this 12 month period, those features will expire automatically, you don’t have to cancel any subscriptions.

Our application form contains some standard questions (Where do you live? Does 23andMe deliver to your country? etc.) but also some details about your motivation, why you want to make your dataset available to the public and why your data might be of great interest (For example: Do you have a rare disease where research is lacking?). Additionally, we will also try to get people genotyped who are currently under-represented in publicly available data sets. Most data up to now is from WEIRDs: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic people (most are probably male, too).

We would like you to deposit the final raw data, which you will then be able to download from 23andMe, into the openSNP database, ideally along with some phenotypic information about yourself. So please think about the possible consequences which may arise by doing so before you apply for one of the genotypings. The application process has some questions about possible consequences as well (just so we get a feeling of whether you know what you are doing). If you get your results, but then find the results too problematic to publish: That is fine. We are aware of this possibility and while it would suck for us as it means less data, you are the one who has the last word in this matter. Some information that might make you a bit more comfortable with the idea of sharing data: We won’t release the names of any applicants (whether successful or unsuccessful) and you can sign up to openSNP using a pseudonym, plus we don’t log any IPs used to access openSNP.

tl;dr

We offer you the chance to get genotyped through 23andMe for free if you are willing to share the data with the public. Here’s the planned schedule:

Until 03/25/12 23:59 o’clock you can apply for a genotyping using this application form

We select the lucky winners between 03/26/12 and 04/08/12 and get in contact with every applicant.

Mid-April: You should receive the 23andMe-kits in your mail.

End of May: You should receive the results of the genotyping, so you can upload the results to openSNP.

If you’ve got any questions regarding the application process, the schedule etc., just let us know using the comments or write us an email to info@opensnp.org. We will try to answer all of your questions as fast as possible.

Good luck,

wishes your openSNP-team!