People Encouraged to Donate Blood Samples to “Monitor Health of Their DNA”

A new campaign launched on the international crowd funding site Indiegogo by Exogen Biotechnology encourages people to donate three samples of their blood in order to “monitor the health of your DNA” and find whether any DNA strings are damaged. Researchers at the company has developed a technique over the past decade at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory using which they can detect DNA damage by measuring physical breaks in the DNA of cells.

These breaks are caused by a person’s lifestyle, environmental toxins or personal genetics. The company has so far managed to raise over $20,000 and hopes that such tests will be as common as a cholesterol test in the future.

“Breaks in our DNA occur frequently, and our bodies repair them every day. However, as we age, the efficiency of how our bodies repair DNA breaks seems to weaken. This decline in repair efficiency can lead to accumulation of unrepaired DNA or misrepaired DNA, which may result in unpredictable and potentially lethal genetic mutations. Exogen hopes that monitoring DNA for breaks will allow individuals to assess the impact of various lifestyles and environments on their overall health and aging”, Dr Jonathan Tang, part of the core team behind the project, said.

Source-Medindia