Which protein matters?

Hey all. I’ve been digging into people’s thoughts on 23andMe and DNA sequencing but ultimately DNA codes for proteins, and so I’m curious… if you could measure presence and quantity of a specific protein or proteins in blood or body fluid which would provide meaningful or insightful data to you?

I know of a company in the UK that are doing that - ProteiQ. They’re using that analysis for testing for ‘overtraining’ in athletes. It’s just one small set of proteins they’re testing for, but they have plans to extend it out in the future.

They gave a talk at the London QS meetup:

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Thanks Justin. Bizarrely I actually met Arnoud a few years back - delighted to hear he’s gone his own way!

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Many common blood tests look at proteins, including total serum protein, albumin/globulin, HDL/LDL, C-reactive protein, insulin, and hemoglobin. There are several direct-to-consumer services that offer these tests (and some that are developing “at home” version of some of these tests).

Rather than looking for specific proteins, it could be interesting to check which genes are being expressed in a cell at a given moment. But I don’t know of any direct-to-consumer companies who are working on that yet.

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