What is the BioRepository?
A BioRepository is a facility that collects and stores samples of biological materials such as DNA, stem cells, blood, sperm and eggs, certain body tissues and proteins.
Why in the world would someone build and maintain a BioRepository under their guesthouse? To answer this, let me tell you something about our founder’s family history and genealogy.
Our founder was born in Korea just 10 years after the end of the Korean War. He traces his family back nearly 425 years and 19 generations in the southern port city of Busan, Korea. His family was never wealthy, but these family genealogical records remain a precious and important part of his family’s genetic and hereditary legacy. If these ancestors had been able to sequence their genomes annually, so much more information about them could be known and understood. By studying the epigenetic changes from year to year in one’s ancestors, one can gain great insights into the lives they lived and challenges they faced and in doing so, find out so much about who they were and why they became who they became. . Future generations will also know about our lives and themselves, in addition to how they came to be who they are genetically and biologically.
David Choo
Today, we have the unprecedented opportunity to sequence our genomes annually (or regularly) and to archive this information for posterity. This effort extends beyond preserving cultural and familial heritage; it captures the biological narrative of each generation. As the first generation in human history able to sequence our genomes, we believe future descendants will appreciate—and perhaps expect—that we embraced these technologies to document, safeguard, and pass forward our genetic records for their benefit and for the advancement of humanity.