Rule of thumb: by the time you hear about a paper, 23andMe has expanded their current chip to cover all the SNPs in the paper. The paper does not cause 23andMe to adopt the SNP, but is a sign that the SNP is popular enough to be on someone else’s chip. The size of these chips is expanding so fast that new ones subsume all old ones. (This paper was published in 2010 and probably collected data in 2009.)
How to figure out whether 23andMe covers a SNP:
Identify the SNP. In table 1 of this paper, the first SNP is listed as “SVIL (rs6481619)”. That means that it is a SNP in the SVIL gene, but 23andMe has dozens of SNPs on this gene. The code starting with RS is a standard dbSNP identifier.
Enter this number into SNPedia, eg, rs6481619 and you will get a page that might say something interesting, such as mentioning the paper about the SNP, or, as in this case, might be pretty much empty. But it usually will have links to other services, including 23andMe. I’m not sure, but I think the existence of the link is a pretty good sign that 23andMe covers the SNP.
Follow the link. This only works if you have a 23andMe account, but they’re free. It tells me that “Lilly Mendel” is AC and “Greg Mendel” is AA, so, yes, 23andMe covers this SNP. If I had been genotyped, it would tell me about me, too.
If you have a 23andMe account, you could search it directly, but I like SNPedia better. It is especially good for converting other naming conventions into RS numbers.
Rule of thumb: by the time you hear about a paper, 23andMe has expanded their current chip to cover all the SNPs in the paper. The paper does not cause 23andMe to adopt the SNP, but is a sign that the SNP is popular enough to be on someone else’s chip. The size of these chips is expanding so fast that new ones subsume all old ones. (This paper was published in 2010 and probably collected data in 2009.)
How to figure out whether 23andMe covers a SNP:
Identify the SNP. In table 1 of this paper, the first SNP is listed as “SVIL (rs6481619)”. That means that it is a SNP in the SVIL gene, but 23andMe has dozens of SNPs on this gene. The code starting with RS is a standard dbSNP identifier.
Enter this number into SNPedia, eg, rs6481619 and you will get a page that might say something interesting, such as mentioning the paper about the SNP, or, as in this case, might be pretty much empty. But it usually will have links to other services, including 23andMe. I’m not sure, but I think the existence of the link is a pretty good sign that 23andMe covers the SNP.
Follow the link. This only works if you have a 23andMe account, but they’re free. It tells me that “Lilly Mendel” is AC and “Greg Mendel” is AA, so, yes, 23andMe covers this SNP. If I had been genotyped, it would tell me about me, too.
If you have a 23andMe account, you could search it directly, but I like SNPedia better. It is especially good for converting other naming conventions into RS numbers.