July 24, 2012
We’ve written about Neil Schwartzman and Jolie Pearl, brother and sister who found one another through 23andMe, but we never tire of their story. CBS This Morning aired a piece about DNA testing featuring the pair and how Neil, who was adopted a few days after he was born, found not just his sister, but his [...]
July 3, 2012
One of 23andMe community users pointed out an error in the original version of this post that has been corrected. We incorrectly reported Thomas Jefferson's paternal haplogroup designation, which was reclassified a few years ago to T. We apologize for the error. Through the magic of the Internet you can [...]
June 21, 2012
The dance is sort of a gnome-like jig — all knees and elbows and no hint of cool — but where Matt Harding gets you is in his pure unabashed release of happiness. As you watch, a smile creeps across your face. You can’t help yourself. For almost a decade, Matt has cobbled together the most unlikely of [...]
June 18, 2012
Editors note: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated the name of Mrs. Obama's maternal great-great grandfather. The correct name is Henry Wells Shields. A story in Sunday’s New York Times about first lady Michelle Obama’s distant white relatives echoes some of what we’ve seen more and [...]
June 15, 2012
Male 23andMe customers can learn more about their paternal line (the ancestry inferred from their Y-chromosome) here: Paternal Ancestry Not yet a customer? Visit our store or learn more. For National Men’s Health Week, and in the lead up to Father's Day, we had two posts on health issues [...]
June 12, 2012
With assorted schwag in hand, our team of elite 23andMers headed to Burbank last weekend to pass out a few free kits, some t-shirts and mingle with some of the most committed genealogists on the planet. Mike Macpherson ready to answer a few ancestry questions. This year’s Southern California Genealogy [...]
June 8, 2012
Over the next three days, a crack team from 23andMe will be at the annual Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in Burbank, to inject even more fun into the event while also offering tips on using genetics in genealogical searches. Most exciting for us is that the team is offering a sneak peek [...]
June 4, 2012
Check out this post to see an illustration of the three degrees of separation between guests on Finding Your Roots. When we learn about our ancestors, who they were and where they came from, the discoveries become part of how we define ourselves and how we understand ourselves to be unique. The PBS series [...]
May 31, 2012
During the series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on PBS, The Spittoon featured posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors. This is the last of their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry. By Tim Janzen, M.D. For over 30 years I have been trying to determine the ancestry [...]
May 22, 2012
Ashkenazi Jews are one group that fall under the umbrella of “European”, but it’s clear from numerous studies that they’re genetically unique and distinct from the European population at large. Most people with Ashkenazi ancestry trace their DNA to Eastern and Central Europe, but also have Middle [...]
