Organisms Homo sapiens Website www.snpedia.com | Primary citation PMID 22140107 | |
 | ||
Description a wiki of human single-nucleotide polymorphisms and genotypes Data types
captured single-nucleotide polymorphisms, genotypes, genes, variation Download URL www.snpedia.com/index.php/Bulk | ||
SNPedia (pronounced "snipedia") is a wiki-based bioinformatics web site that serves as a database of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Each article on a SNP provides a short description, links to scientific articles and personal genomics web sites, as well as microarray information about that SNP. Thus SNPedia may support the interpretation of results of personal genotyping from, e.g., 23andMe and similar companies.
Contents
SNPedia is a semantic wiki, powered by MediaWiki and the Semantic MediaWiki extension.
SNPedia was created, and is run by, geneticist Greg Lennon and programmer Mike Cariaso, who at the time of the site's founding were both located in Bethesda, Maryland.
As of 29 July 2015, the website has 73,310 SNPs in its database. The number of SNPs in SNPedia has doubled roughly once every 14 months since August 2007.
Promethease
An associated freeware computer program called Promethease, also developed by the SNPedia team, allows users to compare personal genetics results against the SNPedia database, generating a report with information about a person's attributes, such as propensity to diseases, based on the presence of specific SNPs within their genome.
In May 2008 Cariaso, using Promethease, won an online contest sponsored by 23andMe to determine as much information as possible about an anonymous woman based only on her genome. Cariaso won in all three categories of "accuracy, creativity and cleverness". In 2009, the anonymous woman ("Lilly Mendel") was revealed to be 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey, allowing a direct comparison between her actual traits and those predicted by Promethease a year earlier.
Reception
In a June 2008 article on personal genomics, a doctor from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine said:
In January 2011, technology journalist Ronald Bailey posted the full result of his Promethease report online. Writing about his decision in Reason magazine, he stated: