Genetic information is powerful, personal, and often misunderstood. Thread of Life exists because we believe you deserve better than a raw data dump or a marketing pitch.
Where the evidence comes from
Every piece of evidence we show you comes from a public, peer-reviewed, or government-funded source: ClinVar, ClinGen, gnomAD, GTEx. We don't editorialize the science. We do editorialize the presentation — because clarity is a form of respect.
Images are mood. Evidence is evidence.
When you see a historical photograph, it's there to evoke the human story behind the data. When you open the evidence drawer, you'll find citations, dates, and links. We never let one masquerade as the other.
Uncertainty is not failure
Uncertainty is the honest state of most genetic knowledge. More than half of all variants submitted to ClinVar are classified as “Uncertain Significance.” We show you what's known, what's contested, and what's still a mystery — and we label each clearly.
No false certainty
We will never imply that a genetic variant determines your destiny. We will never use historical imagery to suggest certainty about the past. We will always distinguish between what's backed by published evidence and what's inferred from patterns.
Open data, open interpretation
The data sources we use are publicly available. Our interpretive layer — the narrative, the journeys, the threads — is our contribution. We believe that making science accessible is itself a form of scientific work.
Reference builds: GRCh37 (hg19) vs GRCh38 (hg38)
Not all coordinates are the same map. A variant location in GRCh37 (also called hg19) does not always match the same numeric position in GRCh38 (hg38). The human reference genome has been revised over time: patches, corrected regions, and improved representations of difficult loci. GRCh37 became the dominant clinical coordinate system for years; GRCh38 improved many regions and is now standard in newer resources.
When you compare results across tools, this matters. Two reports can disagree on position but still describe the same biological variant, because they are using different references. We try to make build context explicit whenever possible, and we encourage checking whether a source is reporting in hg19 or hg38 before drawing conclusions.
The short version: if the map changes, the street number can change. The science doesn't become less true — but interpretation requires knowing which map you're on.