What your genome can, and can't, tell you.
Short, sourced explainers: no hype, just what the science says, what we'd show you, and what we won't claim.
Read your report
Polygenic scores (PRS), in plain words
A polygenic score adds up many tiny genetic nudges into a single leaning. Reading it well means knowing what it leaves out.
Verdict: A polygenic score adds up many small-effect variants into a single statistical tendency, read against a reference group. It is a leaning, not a measurement and not a diagnosis, and its accuracy depends on whether your ancestry matches that reference group.
What a percentile actually means: a rank in a reference group
A percentile is a rank. It says where your score sat among the people in a reference group, and that is the whole of what it says.
Verdict: A percentile is a rank, where you sit in a reference group, not a probability. On its own it does not say whether you will develop a condition, and the rank is built against a European-ancestry reference, so it is materially less accurate if your ancestry differs.
Confidence Tiers explained: why your report grades evidence (Tier 1, 2 and 3)
Some lines in a genome report rest on decades of replicated science. Others are early, contested, or true only for some ancestries. A good report tells you which is which before you read a word of the finding.
Verdict: Not every genetic finding is equally certain, and a report that pretends otherwise is misleading you. Aimosti sorts results into three confidence tiers so a reader can see at a glance how much weight each finding can bear. The tier is part of the result, not decoration.
Coverage and callability: why your file type changes what we can say
Two people with the same DNA can get very different reports from Aimosti. The difference is not the genome, it is the file they uploaded, and what that file lets us read.
Verdict: What a report can say is bounded by the file you uploaded. A genotyping chip, a whole-genome file, and aligned reads each let us read different things, and on every file type an absence can mean 'examined and clear' or simply 'never looked there'. We label which one it is, and we never read a blank as a clean bill of health.
Carrier status vs your own risk: what one copy actually means
A carrier result sounds like a warning about you. For most recessive conditions it is a note about your future children: one working copy is normally enough to keep you unaffected.
Verdict: For most recessive conditions, carrying one copy leaves you unaffected, so a carrier finding is usually about family planning with a partner rather than a prediction about your own health. The two exceptions, two altered copies and an X-linked single copy, are labelled differently for exactly that reason.
Skeptic's Lab
APOE4: the 'Alzheimer's gene', and what that phrase gets wrong
It is the most anxiety-laden result in consumer genetics, and the place where careful framing matters most. APOE4 raises risk. It does not hand down a sentence.
Verdict: APOE4 is the strongest common genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's, but it is a risk factor, not a diagnosis or a destiny. Many carriers never develop the disease, and many people with Alzheimer's carry no APOE4 at all.
COMT and the 'warrior vs worrier' gene
One letter of DNA, the story goes, decides whether you are calm under fire or wired and anxious. The enzyme is real. The personality test is not.
Verdict: Real gene, real enzyme, real but small effect. It is not a personality test, and there is no good evidence for choosing supplements by COMT genotype.
MTHFR: the variant we refuse to report as a clinical finding
Wellness sites sell MTHFR testing as life-changing. Here is why a serious report will not flag it for you.
Verdict: The common MTHFR variants are so common they are close to ordinary, and mainstream genetics has concluded they are not clinically actionable for the conditions marketed around them. We refuse to report them as a clinical finding, and we say why.
health
BRCA2: what a pathogenic variant does (and doesn't) mean
A pathogenic BRCA2 variant raises lifetime cancer risk and is a reason to see a genetic counsellor. Most variants found in the gene are benign or of uncertain significance.
CYP2D6: the enzyme behind how you process many medicines
Why does codeine do nothing for some people and floor others? Often it's one liver enzyme: CYP2D6.
Factor V Leiden: a common clotting risk factor, kept in proportion
Factor V Leiden is the most common inherited clotting tendency in people of European ancestry, and for most carriers the absolute risk of a clot stays low.
HLA-B27: most carriers never develop ankylosing spondylitis
A positive HLA-B27 result raises the risk of ankylosing spondylitis. Most people who carry it never develop the condition, and clinicians read it alongside symptoms rather than on its own.
Lipoprotein(a): a cardiovascular risk factor with a real gap
Lp(a) is a major inherited heart-disease risk, and most people have never had it measured. DNA can flag a likely-high level and point you at the blood test that settles it.
traits
The alcohol flush reaction (ALDH2): one variant, one clear effect
One variant, ALDH2 rs671, explains the flush. It is the cleanest single-variant story in consumer genetics, and it still says nothing about what you should drink.
Are you a fast or slow caffeine metaboliser?
A common variant near CYP1A2 tracks how fast your liver clears caffeine. Sleep, tolerance and dose move the same needle, which is why one variant only takes you so far.
Lactose intolerance: the one variant most people actually have
Most adults worldwide stop making lactase after childhood. A single regulatory variant near LCT is why a minority keeps making it for life.