On Jan. 9, 2020, Mayo Clinic announced it was creating a library of genomic sequencing data on 100,000 consented Mayo Clinic participants to advance research and patient care. Mayo collaborated with Helix, a population genomics company.

Helix’s clinical Exome+ sequencing is a technology that reads all 20,000 genes that code for proteins, plus hundreds of thousands of regions outside the protein-coding regions that are known to be informative, and thus have the most impact on an individual’s health. This comprehensive DNA test uses Next Generation Sequencing technology to screen the exome for genetic variants that can significantly increase the risk for disease.