Dr. Joy Kong explains why your DNA test shows only part of the picture. Genetics is a blueprint for what you might develop, but metabolomics captures what's actually happening in your body right now. Together they reveal far more than either alone.
We need to be careful when we talk about genetics, what, what approach we're talking about. Genetics are a little bit like an architectural drawing. What the house looks like when it's actually built is very different from what the original architectural drawing looks like. And so your genetics are very much the same way. They provide the template, but what actually gets expressed in, in your body is very much influenced by many other factors. We think of genetics as the predisposition to certain things, and metabolics is telling you what the organism is like right now today. Putting the two together is very powerful. Most modern genetics-based diagnostics actually identify the genetic code of tumors or viruses. They don't rely on the genetic code of the person themselves, but they find what is actually expressed, which is real-time identification of the presence of biomarkers. So we need to be careful when we talk about genetics, what approach we're talking about. Having said that, metabolomics does express the state of the organism at the moment much better than your full genome can do.
