When seeking funding for your start-up company, it helps to have friends in high places, and in Silicon Valley few backers are as influential as Sergey Brin, one of Google's co-founders, who is worth more than $16 billion, according to Forbes.

Anne Wojcicki knows this as well as anyone: she is Mr Brin's wife.

Yesterday Google revealed that it had invested $3.9 million in Ms Wojcicki's company, an "early stage" biotech firm which is developing ways for consumers to explore their genetic information.

The disclosure came in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was recommended by Google's audit committee in order that the company be "completely transparent" about its investment, a Google spokesman said.

Ms Wojcicki, a Yale University graduate, met Mr Brin, 33, while he and his partner, Larry Page, were renting garage space from Ms Wojcicki's sister at the time they started their search company.

Google had previously declined to comment on the pair's relationship, but according to media reports they were wed at a ceremony in the Bahamas this month.

In the filing, Google confirmed that Mr Brin was married to Ms Wojcicki, a co-founder and director of 23andMe, which aims to gather information about its customers' DNA with a view to telling them about their ancestry and inherited traits.

It also revealed that Mr Brin, its President of Technology, had personally provided approximately $2.6 million in interim debt financing to 23andMe, which was repaid as part of Google's investment.

"Google's audit committee reviewed and approved this transaction as part of Google's procedures for entering into transactions with related parties," the filing said.

Ms Wojcicki, who has a degree in biology and previously worked in healthcare investment, set up 23andMe last year with a view to "empowering individuals to better understand their genetic information, making use of recent advances in DNA analysis technologies and proprietary web-based software tools."

According to 23andMe's website, the company saw a need to to generate more personalised information "so that biotech and pharmaceutical companies could better understand and develop new drugs".

"23andMe will create a common, standardised resource that has the potential to bring personalised medicine to the public," a statement on the website says.

Google was one of at least four companies to have invested in 23andMe as part of a round of Series A financing, the total amount of which was not disclosed.

Among the others were the venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates and MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, as well as Genentech, the biotech company, whose chief executive, Arthur D. Levinson, is also a Google director.

The company, which like Google is based in Mountain View, California, is currently recruiting for a range of positions, including software engineer, "human geneticist/scientific curator", and "director of phenotype collection".

Advertised benefits include medical and dental cover, "complimentary beverages and honey roasted peanuts" and "free genotyping" for the successful applicant and a family member.

23andMe said it aimed to introduce its service by the end of the year.

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