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Company in UK touts unique gift for loved-ones

A British company is touting the ultimate personalized gift -- jewellery based on a loved-one's unique genetic fingerprint.

Employing the same biotechnology used to settle paternity suits and ide??ntify criminals, the customer uses a swab to take a very small sample of cells from the inside of the recipient's mouth.

The swab is then sent to the firm, Complement Genomics of Sunderland, northeastern England, which extracts the DNA, amplifies it and then analyses it.

This provides the basis for a pattern called a short tandem repeat that is unique to each individual and somewhat resembles a barcode.

The pattern is then reproduced in rugs, a glass sculpture and also jewellery designed by local artists, including necklaces, that use gemstones to represent the colored bands.

The stones are interspersed with slugs of sterling silver to represent the distance between each band.

"It's an exclusive gift based on a unique gene profile," Complement Genomics' chief executive officer, Neil Sullivan, told the weekly New Scientist, which reported on the innovation this week.

"It's a one-off that can never be replicated."

The price of individuality, though, does not come cheap.

The necklaces are priced at ?581, while a 90x150cm (three feet by five feet) woollen rug carries a tag of ?934.

The patterns are not detailed enough to be used for paternity testing and avoids regions of DNA that could reveal a person's genetic secrets, Sullivan says.

Complement Genomics says the sample is not entered into any database and is destroyed after three months.
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