Now if my experience last week at a seminar called The Molecular Full Monty - Personal Genomes, Personal Health doesn't have some sort of surreal quality to it , I'm not sure what else would qualify. I was in Washington, D.C. for a workshop on Popular Representation in Science and Communication organized by Alberta bioethcist Tim Caulfield. The workshop ended in the early afternoon and I had the opportunity to attend the seminar on personal genomics at the National Press Club. The panel featured Henry Greely, Colleen McBride, Robert Green and George Church - all top ranked researchers. They gave their views and summarized some findings on personal genome testing and the organizers had left plenty of time for questions after the session. Because I've had my own testing done I had a comment and question and as per the protocol for the event started off giving my name and organization. I know what's so surreal about this ?

Well it turned out Mike Cariaso was in the crowd. Mike is the creator of the Promethease software which will compare your 23andMe or deCODE raw SNP file against the SNPedia database. I got the last of my results a few weeks ago and used his software to do an analysis. Mike noticed the activity on the database at the time, pinged the source, found my blog, and downloaded the files I posted on the blog entry I'm Mikes Genes. He recognized my name at the seminar and came over to talk to me after it ended. And there on his laptop was me ! Or at least the virtual representation of my genes !
So while it took my whole careeer and a journey of thousands of kilometers to get into the National Press Club, my DNA had already arrived. As CBC Radio host Donna McElligott put it, " this gives a whole new meaning to six degrees of separation".
If you're interested in what those files look like feel free to download the 23andME or deCODE analyses.

P.S.
The coincidences didn't exactly end there either. Our Facebook Genomics application has been getting quite a bit of attention and someone from theNational Human Genomics Research Institute had talked to me about it when it first launched back in April. He was also at the seminar and we had a good talk afterwards. Turns out he is originally a Canadian !