Here is an application which shows why making automultisample collection from one saliva tube beneficial
There are studies I read about that communicate tremendous knowledge. One of these is that the Met Met version of the COMT gene causes people to describe their moment to moment way of being as two or even three times more pleasant, happier, throughout living than those with different genetics. (link)
Now there is an opportunity to study another happiness gene. The gene that directs the production of Sam-E has just been published. I think this could be researched to be described as a happiness gene. It is possible that natural genetic variations at its production would also effect personality. There is a study that notes there are 77 variations of MAT2A, the gene that codes Sam-E. One of them is 40 pct differently active.
So, Id like to employ the entire source DNA of the COMT study to see if COMT with Sam-E produces the highest amplitude most sustained happier quality of living as well as do the better science that more accurately describes the effect of the Same-E gene.
To do that I would use the original gene samples, if they had been stored as an automultisample I could just correspond with the other researcher to get the original material.
This technology is a simple way that kind of thing could occur among genomic scientists. When they collect a saliva sample the tube could just have a few hundred preservativized polymer or gel microbeads that would soak up part of the sample fluid, these would be stable at ambient temperature. If another researcher miles away or at a different time wanted to run a genetic characterization of the sample group they could just use the preserved sample.
A dna saliva tube at the link already has the preservative technology, all they would have to do is place some microbeads at the tube so there was a convenient resendable to give other scientists.
Just making the standard procedure use those saliva tubes with the preserver beads would permit really wonderful datasets to aggregate between researchers.
Anyway think how wonderful it would be to have dozens of personality characteristics related to genotype at the same large sample group. Now there is a large group shared genetic data project, currently 1000 fully sequenced human genomes, scheduled to be a million, that scientists can use as a common research basis, yet with personality it is the specific genome with a plurality of psychology measures. So the mulitbead per sample approach brings particular value.
The product at the link already preserves DNA, thus just changing the shape of the tube as well as placing a few hundred polymer or gel beads might be less than 10c per sample to give much greater scientific utility.-- beanangel, Feb 18 2012 COMT happiness gene http://www.ncbi.nlm...gov/pubmed/17687265 [beanangel, Feb 18 2012] DNA saliva tubes that autopreserve the sample http://www.norgenbi...-product.php?ID=385 [beanangel, Feb 18 2012] I think The Sam-E gene MAT2A is linkable to personality http://www.ncbi.nlm...gov/pubmed/21813468 [beanangel, Feb 18 2012] TLDRMOI, but it seems fair enough.
One problem is that, stupidly, most studies that involve DNA sampling are not allowed to distribute that DNA for other purposes than the one originally specified, so the utility of this may be limited.
There are increasing numbers of projects to build DNA banks with wider permissions - "biobanks" - though. Typically, they take a few ml of blood and extract DNA, because the amounts you get from saliva are not huge. The DNA is then typically stored frozen in microtitre trays for easy robotic access.
I quite like the bead idea, though.
Over the next few years, this will become redundant because, once you have a DNA sample, it'll be cheap and simple to just sequence the crap out it. Then all the data anyone will need will be on a hard drive somewhere.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 18 2012 A slight improvement to this idea might be dippy fronds
a little like a like a daisy wheel printer disc dripping into a test tube, then remove the center of the disc just leaving the many linear fronds dipping into the tube.
The distal end of each frond would be porous to absorb saliva. Rather than grab a bead out of the tube the researcher could more easily grab a couple of the dippy fronds from the upper surface of the tube. The Really impressive version would be to lasermark each preuse tube along with each frond so the recipient researcher would get a group of individually labelled dna samples-- beanangel, Feb 23 2012 random, halfbakery