(Bloomberg) -- Google Inc.’s Calico, a biotechnology firmcreated by the search-engine giant to study aging and relateddiseases, will delve into the genetic database amassed by a unit ofAncestry.com LLC to look for hereditary influences onlongevity.

AncestryDNA, a division of the Provo, Utah-based genealogycompany, has gathered more than 1 million DNA samples from the $99testing kits it sells to consumers to help map their familyhistory.

Besides the genetic information, Calico will have access to tensof millions of public family trees created by consumers, whichinclude birth and death dates, relationships, and geographicallocations.

“Now that we’ve got 1 million samples, there’s enoughstatistical power in the dataset to elucidate drug targets,” saidKen Chahine, Ancestry’s executive vice president and head of DNAand health. “If you aggregate a set of individuals who hadlong-lived families and we have their genetic information as well,that’s a way to start making hypotheses about the heritability oflongevity.”

Health companies are mining the growing amounts ofdigital information on people’s geneticcodes to hunt for clues about how diseases develop --and how they might be cured or prevented. Databases are growing ascosts fall as low as $1,000 to sequence a whole genome, whileselective genotyping is even cheaper.

Closely held Ancestry.com reported $619.5 million in revenuelast year. Chahine wasn’t able to say how much the DNA kit salescontributed to revenue. The companies declined to disclose thefinancial terms of the deal.

Difficult task

“Our common experience suggests that there may be hereditaryfactors underlying longevity, but finding the genes responsibleusing standard techniques has proven elusive,” said David Botstein,Calico’s chief scientific officer, in a statement. “This is anextraordinary opportunity to address a fundamental unansweredquestion in longevity research.”

In announcing Calico’s creation in 2013, Google Chief ExecutiveOfficer Larry Page said in a blog post that the company hoped toimprove “millions of lives” with “longer-term, moonshot thinkingaround health care and biotechnology.” Calico, short for CaliforniaLife Sciences LLC, is led by Arthur Levinson, chairman of AppleInc. and former chairman and CEO of Roche Holding AG’s Genentechunit.

Budding partnerships

Over the last year, Calico has formed alliances with industryand academic partners.

AbbVie Inc. has contributed $750 million to building a researchand development facility, and Calico has also signed collaborationdeals with QB3, a University of California-backed biotech startupaccelerator, and with the Broad Institute, a Cambridge,Massachusetts, center run by the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology and Harvard University.

Calico isn’t the only company looking in consumers’ genes for clues on humanhealth.

Another Silicon Valley startup, 23andMe Inc., which sells $99DNA spit kits to consumers, has also set out to find drug targetsand is working with drugmakers that are eager to access its largedatabase of genetic and health information.

Ancestry.com started a new division, Ancestry Health, on July16, which will allow consumers to create a family health historysimilar to the family trees made on Ancestry.com. The AncestryDNAdivision is exploring the creation of a health- focused testing kitto rival 23andMe’s, according to Chahine.

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