Last year, actress and activist Angelina Jolie made headlines when she wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times about why she chose to have a double mastectomy after undergoing a $3,000 genetic test showing she inherited faulty versions of the BRCA1 gene.
Her mother died of breast cancer at a relatively young age, and the test was an indicator that Jolie had a high risk of developing breast cancer in her lifetime.
It’s just one example of how technology has allowed many people — both high-profile and everyday Joes — to learn more about their risks of developing genetic diseases through genome sequencing.
Read the full, original story: Genome sequencing highlights risks of diseases
