Last week, the partner of the founders Delian Asparouhov realized that he had not controlled his genetics in a while. Click on the opening of a control panel created by Nucleus Genomics, a startup supported by the founder Fund, which receives saliva samples that sequences and then compares the results of DNA with extensive data linking health issues to genes. In a matter of seconds, he concluded that he had a predisposition to schizophrenia, a heaven of high IQ and prostate cancer. “Bummer,” he got up.
If Asaphrouf’s reaction seems to us, it is only because he and the nucleus team he supports dream of, much larger. Imagine a world where your medical remedies are tailored to your genetics or where each couple takes the DNA sequence before children together – or a world where, as Asparouhov imagines, the applications dating have a “child simulation” that combines Your genetic tests together and shows and shows what a child can inherit.
Today, the core is one step closer to the future. The company, founded by 25 -year -old Kian Sadeghi, announced a $ 14 million A series, bringing its total funding to about $ 32 million. Investors such as seven six six, Balaji Srinivasan and SpaceX Achal upadhyaya have gathered behind Sadeghi’s vision for widely available genetic exams.
“DNA is actually the type of final health test,” Sadeghi said. “Thus, a pillar and you take your analysis in about 800 conditions. And this will grow quickly in the coming months, until any common and rare illness is virtually known.”
The core is strong because the cost of genome sequence has fallen in recent years. In 2007, the cost of identifying genome sequence close to $ 1 million. Today, Nucleus, staffed by a group Doctoral and genetic expertsIt charges $ 400 to send a sample of saliva to a third sequencer and then analyze the results, telling users a series of possible diseases that may be at risk. Sadeghi believes that, in the next five years, “the cost of genome sequence will be negligible”, and everyone will have “their genome on their smartphone”.
Sadeghi’s dream started with a tragedy. One night, his cousin died in her sleep from a previous unknown genetic state. Loss permanently changed the path of his life. He left the college and moved home, where his program was as follows: Wake up, meditate for an hour, the company’s plans related to the gene in a notebook for 12 hours, meditated for another hour. “I believe in the soul,” he reflects. “I have meditated every day, I think, five years.”
His year of work and meditation was born core – and sent Sadeghi to the orbit of Silicon Valley’s most famous Contrarians. He first met Peter Thiel at Hereticon, the Bash founding fund that celebrates everything that is controversial (Sadeghi remembers a particularly exciting exorcist). It was a suitable place to meet, taking into account all the controversy that Sadeghi would be tried.
Last year, Sadeghi started the Nucleus IQ, which tells users how much their genetics are associated with high intelligence indicators. Sadeghi puts a huge asterisk next to this claim: there is still many that we do not know the relationship between genes and IQs and, even if we did, genetics can represent so much, while one’s environment handles the rest.
The geneticist Sasha Gusev called into question the accuracy of the core IQ tests (Sadeghi then published one long defense), and Others pointed out IQ tests of the core could lead to discrimination and stigma. Sadeghi’s approach is also remarkably different from competitors: in 2018, 23andme told MIT Technology Review that it would not release information about consumers about genetics and intelligence for The fear of “misinterpretation”.
But Sadeghi and Asparouhov believe that the average American should have as much information as possible about their genetics. Asparouhov finds the hesitation around the IQ core “very strange”, adding that if we are able to recognize the genetic advantages to athletes (like Michael Phelps’s amazing feather), because we wouldn’t do the same for the IQ? “Experts claim to know what is best for you,” he said. “But I think it’s best to give consumers the information available to them and let them decide.”
As Nucleus gets more customers, Asparouhov says the company’s ideas will improve even better, the results in a core control panel are automatically updated with new information. “At some point there will be a phenotypic reference, where you say in the core. I have blue eyes.
When asked if the connection of things like blue eyes, blond hair and IQ could be interpreted as eugenics, he explained with a laugh, “I said Brown Hair!”
Then, imitating the same move of the hand that Elon Musk performed after President Trump’s inauguration, he joked: “My heart comes out to you.”
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