DNA storage kit?

Engadget | DNA Direct shrink wraps DNA for future forensics

This caught my eye on Engadget. So some company is selling a DNA "storage kit". I really don't get the point of this, is there a market?

Quoting the DNA Direct company press release, they said that stored DNA can help you "understand your medical history, inherited characteristics, and family tree", saving it for use when newer technologies come in the future. OK, so what's the difference between the DNA you sampled now and stored, and the DNA you sample from yourself right at the time needed? Well, you could say that our genes get old and decay with time, but I don't think DNA in our body would decay any faster then the sample you stored. So, put simply, unless you hope your DNA sample would be available long after you are dead, there is no need to store your own DNA. Then why save it after your dead? You are long gone by then, so what if anything comes out of your DNA? I would not like the idea of my kids going to court over some stupid investigation on my DNA after I am long gone.

Now, to the process. You are supposed to mail in a swabbed sample of your cheek cells back to the company. Let's just assume that the cells are intact when arriving at the lab, and the delivery didn't take too long. Well, the cells better be intact, or the DNA might not survive the shipment. So how would the company do it? The straight forward way (though pure speculation) would be to break the cells in a solvent, pass it through a miniprep DNA purification kit. Next, spin dry the DNA into dry powder, and add that "special protective resin" the company was advertising about (I have no idea what it is, and it must be a business secret). Put it in a centrifuge tube, then in a metal box (thus, UV protective), and send it back to you.

Is there an amplification process in there? If there isn't, so much DNA might be lost in the purification process that it's not of good use. If there is, how do they do it? PCR is the most common and fast way to do it, but if they go cheep and use Taq polymerase, well hello high mutation rate; if they use a better enzyme, like Pfu, the mutation rate is lower, but it's still there. And I am not sure the $175 could afford the use of Pfu.

Of course, there must be some people who are willing to pay for this service, but for the majority of us, I see no motivation to do it, and also see no proof of yield and mutation reliability for serious usability.