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.

若不是因為我們的共同朋友琳達，我永遠不會認識哈里特。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。琳達與友人合資創(chuàng)辦了一家在線個人基因組公司，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)琳達介紹才認識的，因為琳達發(fā)現(xiàn)哈里特和我有個共通點：一種罕見的粒線體DNA，這表示我們是遠親。結果表明，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擁有相同DNA變異的人成立了臉書社團。

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.

我講這個故事是為了說明一個觀點。哈里特和我會相識，是因為生物醫(yī)學的一項成就--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)字科技與社交平臺的融合，讓我們有可能知道自己的基因型，并且與網(wǎng)絡世界分享我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)。